How prevalent is the defensive medicine practice among the Egyptian

Abstract

Background: Recently, there has been a remarkable increase in manhandling to physicians and vandalism in hospitals by patients and their relatives; moreover. There is a continuous increase in medical malpractice allegations. This high sense of insecurity among physicians caused them to practice defensive medicine, which could be positive or negative. Defensive medicine practicing has harmful effects on both the patients and the resources. Aim: This work was done to assess the prevalence of defensive medicine practicing among Kasr Alainy hospital residents. Methods: A questionnaire that includes ten "yes or no" questions was circulated manually among the residents, where the number of “yes” answers in the questionnaire is considered directly proportional to the sense of insecurity among the responders and more than 4 'yes' answers were considered sense of insecurity. Results: 88.9% of responders had more than four yes answers in the questionnaire, and the median number of yes answers was 7. There was a significant difference regarding the specialty where surgical specialties had a higher score than non-surgical specialties. Conclusion: Behaviors indicating defensive medicine practice and sense of insecurity showed high prevalence among the studied sample of Egyptian residents.