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Healthcare delivery is a highly complex, deeply personal and costly endeavour that involves multiple specialties and services. There is an imbalance in knowledge between the healthcare provider and consumer that may contribute to doubts and uncertainty over treatment and outcomes. It is unsurprising that conflict and dispute can develop between healthcare providers and patients and their next-of-kin. The use of mediation in the healthcare setting has recently been promoted in many developed countries, including Singapore. We administered a detailed 32-item survey in a large tertiary-care teaching hospital to improve our understanding of the knowledge, attitude and practice of dispute resolution among clinicians to pave the way for better strategies to improve the adoption of mediation in healthcare setting. Ninety-seven respondents had an average of 62% (SD: 12%) knowledge score. The most common misconceptions held by the respondents about mediation were: (1) mediation was about fact-finding, (2) mediation is limited to only certain types of dispute, (3) mediation proceeds by both parties giving their account of the dispute, then a third party decides a settlement, (4) the average time it takes to resolve a dispute through mediation, (5) the cost of mediation, (5) the venue of mediation, (6) the person determining the outcome of mediation, (7) confidentiality of mediation. In general, the respondents were positive about the use of mediation as a dispute resolution tool. When asked to indicate the relative importance of different outcomes of dispute resolution, financial compensation and waiver of hospital bill attracted mixed responses while understanding facts of dispute, assurance that the same error would not recur, and offering corrective treatment were rated as being important. By contrast, seeking an apology from the complainant was considered neutral to somewhat important and the respondents were least concerned with the publicity of the dispute. Direct negotiation with the complainant was considered the most time- and cost-efficient means of resolving a dispute while the opposite was true for litigation. Mediation was considered the approach where the clinicians are most likely to achieve their desired outcome while litigation was considered least likely to produce a favourable outcome. Approximately half of the respondents reported having personal experience or known of a colleague who had been involved in a medico-legal dispute. A quarter of these cases were resolved by direct negotiations with the complainant while lawyers, the judge and mediation, resolved approximately 15% each, respectively. The knowledge base of the clinicians in this study about mediation was moderate and probably reflected the general lack of direct experience in the resolution of a dispute or training in mediation. This further corroborated with the general response that the uptake of mediation in the healthcare setting is currently poor in Singapore due to the lack of awareness and perceived lack of avenue among the surveyed cl...

BackgroundBiphasic defibrillation has been practiced worldwide for >15 years. Yet, consensus does not exist on the best energy levels for optimal outcomes when used in patients with ventricular fibrillation (VF)/pulseless ventricular tachycardia (VT).MethodsThis prospective, randomized, controlled trial of 235 adult cardiac arrest patients with VF/VT was conducted in the emergency and cardiology departments. One group received low-energy (LE) shocks at 150–150–150 J and the other escalating higher-energy (HE) shocks at 200–300–360 J. If return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) was not achieved by the third shock, LE patients crossed over to the HE arm and HE patients continued at 360 J. Primary end point was ROSC. Secondary end points were 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day survival.ResultsBoth groups were comparable for age, sex, cardiac risk factors, and duration of collapse and VF/VT. Of the 118 patients randomized to the LE group, 48 crossed over to the HE protocol, 24 for persistent VF, and 24 for recurrent VF. First-shock termination rates for HE and LE patients were 66.67% and 64.41%, respectively (P=0.78, confidence interval: 0.65–1.89). First-shock ROSC rates were 25.64% and 29.66%, respectively (P=0.56, confidence interval: 0.46–1.45). The 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day survival rates were 85.71%, 74.29%, and 62.86% for first-shock ROSC LE patients and 70.00%, 50.00%, and 46.67% for first-shock ROSC HE patients, respectively. Conversion rates for further shocks at 200 J and 300 J were low, but increased to 38.95% at 360 J.ConclusionFirst-shock termination and ROSC rates were not significantly different between LE and HE biphasic defibrillation for cardiac arrest patients. Patients responded best at 150/200 J and at 360 J energy levels. For patients with VF/pulseless VT, consideration is needed to escalate quickly to HE shocks at 360 J if not successfully defibrillated with 150 or 200 J initially.

This study reported the time required to manage patient complaints in a larger tertiary-care academic medical centre. Predictors of the time spent on resolving patient complaints can be used as parameters for resource planning.