On Medical Disputes of Emergency Physicians in Taiwan — taking Pingtung County as the example

Introduction Medical disputes of emergency physicians in Taiwan are growing rapidly. Due to overcrowded emergency rooms, and more and more medical disputes, the doctor-patient relationship is getting more nervous throughout our country in recent years. Up to 85% of emergency physicians thought that "medical disputes could break out at any time" is the main source of pressure. Discussion of medical disputes of emergency physicians is without delay.

Purposes Up to now, there have been only a few studies of discussion of medical disputes of emergency physicians in Taiwan. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore and discuss the causes of medical disputes of emergency physicians, and to give forward suggestions and feedback to emergency physicians.


Methods This research utilized casual-comparative research as a basic study. Objects are emergency physicians in the practice in Pingtung County. Sampling methods are for all emergency physicians in Pingtung County, issued questionnaires. Opinions of the committee of experts are as the base of the questionnaire, and then data are collected by means of this questionnaire. Furthermore, the key factors of medical dispute are scored and then analyzed by statistical methods..

Results Medical disputes of emergency physicians were up to 41%, occurred in Pingtung County. We discovered that "medical dispute ever occurred if or not" had significant differences ( relative to other process and demand factors ) in the " risk of emergency transfer ". It is interesting, senior emergency physicians had lower means of “error of emergency diagnosis”, and junior emergency physicians had higher means of “error of emergency invasive treatment”. Senior emergency physicians believed that hospital medical dispute crisis management system is not perfect. Emergency directors put more importance to "error of history taking and physiological examination", "error of emergency diagnosis ", and "error of emergency treatment". Emergency physicians believed that emergency diagnosis, treatment, triage, improper family’s attitude, physician-patient relationship and social environment were important. Hospital manager and director of the emergency must improve related processes. Personal factor of emergency physician was sorted finally.

Conclusions Whenever there is a medical dispute, people always blame emergency physicians. However, this research showed that personal factor of emergency physician was sorted finally. This research revealed that the causes of medical dispute of emergency physicians were complicated and very important. More professional training programs, such as invasive procedures, should be provided for junior emergency physicians. After all regional questionnaires collected in the future, we can mine the regional medical disputes of emergency physicians throughout our country. Finally, the Department of Health should put importance to the overcrowded emergency room and the risk of emergency transfer.