Should Doctors Say They Are Sorry? The Power of an Apology Done Right
In medicine, the stakes are high, and mistakes can have serious consequences. Unfortunately, the pressures on today’s healthcare professionals - insurance demands, time constraints, and financial strains - mean that doctors are often working harder yet spending less time with patients leaving them feeling underserved and frustrated. Other times, medical providers, who are humans, simply make mistakes.
While conventional wisdom formerly discouraged medical providers from apologizing, a wave of “I’m sorry” laws combined with evolved thinking now make apologies far more palatable, even for risk managers. In addition, patients like me who have been made to feel invisible at times or even harmed believe that apologies done right are an essential part of the doctor patient relationship.
How Apology Laws Differ
Many states have some type of an “apology law”. As the color-coded map below shows, there are three types of these laws:
Protections of both apologies and admissions of guilt
Protections of apologies but not admissions of guilt
General protections of apologies (not specific to healthcare)
SOURCE: American College of Emergency Physicians 2021
Interestingly, the UK has taken the concept of an apology law even further. The Health and Care Professions Council has adopted a “Duty of Candour (UK spelling)” that requires providers to “be open, honest and candid when something has gone wrong with the care, treatment or other services”. Furthermore, apologies are not just considered good practice but essential:
Model Programs
The University of Michigan Health System has instituted widely heralded error disclosure policies that include an apology, an offer of a financial compensation, and a quality improvement program to help prevent the recurrence of errors. These efforts have decreased the number of lawsuits against the institution. The University of Michigan’s program has been so successful, in fact, that the so-called “Michigan Model” has been inspirational and foundational for similar initiatives at other organizations.
Patient POV: The Healing Power of a Doctor’s Apology
When doctors make errors, their instinct might be to hide them, fearing litigation or loss of trust. In my own experience as a patient who has received apologies and as the two stories below reveal, apologizing can have profound benefits.
In one case, a doctor made a mistake that resulted in a patient’s heart stopping during a gynecologic surgery. The patient survived, but the doctor realized that her failure to tell the rest of the surgical team that the patient’s liver was enlarged caused a potentially life-threatening complication. The doctor didn’t know what to do:
“I hadn’t been taught how to talk to patients about complications in medical school, and I’d never actually seen a supervisor apologize to a patient before. Was that because of a fear of being sued? Or because there’s this expectation that doctors are perfect? Either way, bringing it up felt like breaking some kind of unwritten rule.”
Instead of brushing off the error, the doctor apologized. The patient’s response was understanding and forgiving:
“[T]he older I get, the more I’ve realized that nothing is certain. I knew something might go wrong when I agreed to the surgery. What matters is that you all solved the problem. It matters that you care this much.”
This experience taught the doctor that an apology didn’t make her less capable. By increasing her connection to the patient, it made her a better physician.
In another case in, a UK woman endured years of pain and dismissive treatment from doctors before one finally admitted to misdiagnosing her condition. This admission brought the patient some peace, even though it was too late to prevent the loss she suffered. The doctor’s willingness to acknowledge his mistake helped restore some of the trust that had been eroded over time.
These stories show that apologies don’t just repair relationships—they can also improve healthcare. Patients are more likely to forgive and move forward when their doctors acknowledge mistakes, leading to better emotional outcomes and, ultimately, better medical care. In a field where the pressure to be perfect is immense, embracing humanity and humility might just be what the doctor ordered.
