I was privileged and humbled to listen to a talk (today) by an EM consultant with an interest in compassionate governance.  After presenting a devastating account of error in a paediatric case, we all answered that the root cause of the error was system or process. He argued during the next 20 minutes that just being civilised could perhaps reduce many errors in our daily practice.

We all know that there are many factors that influence an action at any one point in time, and if they all line up there is potential for error (Swiss cheese analogy). We create processes and systems to try and mitigate the opportunities for errors, but it is very difficult to take the human factor out of the equation. We are only human, after all.

​Earlier this year I was involved in the resuscitation of a child who suffered a cardiac arrest in our department. She had inadvertently received an overdose of phenytoin after being intubated for status epilepticus.

Clinical empathy is an essential but often overlooked skill. Unlike sympathy, which is defined as feeling sorry for another person, clinical empathy is the ability to stand in a patient’s shoes and to convey an understanding of the patient’s situation as well as the desire to help. Clinical empathy was once dismissively known as “good bedside manner” and traditionally regarded as far less important than technical acumen. But a number of studies in the past decade has found that it is no mere frill. Increasingly, empathy is considered essential to establishing trust, the foundation of a good doctor-patient relationship. Studies have linked empathy to greater patient satisfaction, better outcomes, decreased physician burnout, and a lower risk of malpractice suits and errors.