The power of regret.

Jerome Groopman; Pamela Hartzband

Commentary

The power of regret.

October 25, 2017

Groopman J, Hartzband P. N Engl J Med. 2017;377(16):1507-1509.

View more articles from the same authors.

Clinicians may feel regret when the care they provide falls short of their expectations. This commentary explores how regret can influence patients' decisions regarding their care and recommends that physicians discuss risks and benefits of their treatment options to mitigate potential regret among patients.

PubMed citation

Available at

Related Resources From the Same Author(s)

Off the record — avoiding the pitfalls of going electronic.

April 30, 2008

Our stubborn quest for diagnostic certainty.

June 1, 1989

Opioid prescribing trends and the physician’s role in responding to the public health crisis.

February 20, 2019

A primer on PDSA: executing plan–do–study–act cycles in practice, not just in name.

February 15, 2017

Fostering patient safety competencies using multiple-patient simulation experiences.

December 9, 2009

CPOE: strategies for success.

May 19, 2010

Opioids for pain management in older adults: strategies for safe prescribing.

February 22, 2017

Peer support for clinicians: a programmatic approach.

July 20, 2016

Healthcare management strategies: interdisciplinary team factors.

November 14, 2012

The key to CPOE.

December 12, 2007

Inadequacies of physical examination as a cause of medical errors and adverse events: a collection of vignettes.

September 2, 2015

Facilitating a safe transition from the pediatric emergency department to home with a post-discharge phone call: a quality-improvement initiative to improve patient safety.

July 9, 2014

Using computerized virtual cases to explore diagnostic error in practicing physicians.

February 13, 2019

Flying lessons for clinicians: developing system 2 practice.

June 21, 2017

Formal medicine reconciliation within the emergency department reduces the medication error rates for emergency admissions.

November 24, 2010

Clinical nurse specialists as leaders in rapid response.

March 10, 2010

Nursing assessment of continuous vital sign surveillance to improve patient safety on the medical/surgical unit.

December 9, 2015

Improvement in detection of wrong-patient errors when radiologists include patient photographs in their interpretation of portable chest radiographs.

July 15, 2015

Do older patients' perceptions of safety highlight barriers that could make their care safer during organisational care transfers?

January 30, 2005

The mindful path to nursing accuracy: a quasi-experimental study on minimizing medication administration errors.

May 19, 2021

Managing medication errors—a qualitative study.

July 13, 2005

Lessons from "unexpected increased mortality after implementation of a commercially sold computerized physician order entry system."

August 16, 2006

The social cost of adverse medical events, and what we can do about it.

April 27, 2011

Tamper-resistant drugs cannot solve the opioid crisis.

January 18, 2017

Perianesthesia nursing advocacy: an influential voice for patient safety.

June 11, 2008

Do physicians clean their hands? Insights from a covert observational study.

July 27, 2016

Prevention of pediatric medication errors by hospital pharmacists and the potential benefit of computerized physician order entry.

January 17, 2007

Rapid response team in a rural hospital.

May 23, 2012

Trends in central line–associated bloodstream infections in a trauma-surgical intensive care unit.

April 6, 2011

Teaching patient safety in simulated learning experiences.

June 22, 2011

Anticoagulation patient safety goal compliance at a university health system: methods for achieving the goal.

September 23, 2009

Tips to reduce dangerous interruptions by healthcare staff.

February 6, 2013

Thirty-day, all-cause readmissions for elderly patients who have an injury-related inpatient stay.

November 28, 2012

Developing a high value care programme from the bottom up: a programme of faculty-resident improvement projects targeting harmful or unnecessary care.

November 9, 2016

Healthcare professional and patient codesign and validation of a mechanism for service users to feedback patient safety experiences following a care transfer: a qualitative study.

October 5, 2016

Inpatient fall prevention: use of in-room Webcams.

January 9, 2013

Factors underlying suboptimal diagnostic performance in physicians under time pressure.

January 16, 2019

Systematic review: impact of health information technology on quality, efficiency, and costs of medical care.

May 31, 2006

Think twice: effects on diagnostic accuracy of returning to the case to reflect upon the initial diagnosis.

September 23, 2020

Interruptions during the delivery of high-risk medications.

June 2, 2010

Interdisciplinary team training identifies discrepancies in institutional policies and practices.

June 22, 2011

PReSaFe: A model of barriers and facilitators to patients providing feedback on experiences of safety.

December 7, 2016

Patients' conceptualizations of responsibility for healthcare: a typology for understanding differing attributions in the context of patient safety.

June 5, 2019

Nursing home patient safety culture perceptions among licensed practical nurses.

February 1, 2023

Impact of the primary care nurse manager on nurse intent to leave and staff perception of patient safety.

February 21, 2024

Estimating breast cancer overdiagnosis after screening mammography among older women in the United States.

August 30, 2023

Implementing a survey for patients to provide safety experience feedback following a care transition: a feasibility study

October 9, 2019

Use of multidisciplinary rounds to simultaneously improve quality outcomes, enhance resident education, and shorten length of stay.

July 25, 2007

Medicaid markets and pediatric patient safety in hospitals.

September 26, 2007

Disclosure coaching: an ask-tell-ask model to support clinicians in disclosure conversations.

July 25, 2018

Increasing patient–clinician concordance about medical error disclosure through the patient TIPS model.

July 12, 2017

Housestaff and medical student attitudes toward medical errors and adverse events.

August 1, 2007

Evaluating teamwork in a simulated obstetric environment.

May 9, 2007

Improving patient safety in public hospitals: developing standard measures to track medical errors and process breakdowns.

April 4, 2018

Supporting a psychiatric hospital culture of safety.

November 21, 2012

Twenty-four/seven: a mixed-method systematic review of the off-shift literature.

August 29, 2012

Perceptions of pediatric hospital safety culture in the United States: an analysis of the 2016 Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture.

April 24, 2019

Cracking the code for quality: the interrelationships of culture, nurse demographics, advocacy, and patient outcomes.

March 11, 2020

Learning from error: identifying contributory causes of medication errors in an Australian hospital.

March 19, 2008

Does time pressure have a negative effect on diagnostic accuracy?

March 2, 2016

Factors associated with adverse events resulting from medical errors in the emergency department: two work better than one.

March 20, 2013

Opportunities to enhance laboratory professionals' role on the diagnostic team.

November 16, 2016

Quality improvement through implementation of discharge order reconciliation.

June 12, 2013

A patient safety dilemma: obesity in the surgical patient.

February 15, 2017

A multiobserver study of the effects of including point-of-care patient photographs with portable radiography: a means to detect wrong-patient errors.

October 8, 2014

Patient safety, error reduction, and pediatric nurses' perceptions of smart pump technology.

May 7, 2014

Association of note quality and quality of care: a cross-sectional study.

April 23, 2014

The fusion of incident learning and failure mode and effects analysis for data-driven patient safety improvements.

March 17, 2021

Associations between safety outcomes and communication practices among pediatric nurses in the United States.

January 19, 2022

Effect of a rapid response team on the incidence of in-hospital mortality.

September 7, 2022

One system's journey in creating a disclosure and apology program.

October 7, 2009

Checking it twice: an evaluation of checklists for detecting medication errors at the bedside using a chemotherapy model.

September 8, 2010

Patients and families as teachers: a mixed methods assessment of a collaborative learning model for medical error disclosure and prevention.

July 13, 2016

Estimating the information gap between emergency department records of community medication compared to on-line access to the community-based pharmacy records.

September 11, 2013

Voices from frontline nurses on care quality and patient safety during COVID-19: an application of the Donabedian Model.

November 1, 2023

Content analysis of patient safety incident reports for older adult patient transfers, handovers, and discharges: do they serve organizations, staff, or patients?

January 8, 2020

The utility of adding retrospective medication profiling to computerized provider order entry in an ambulatory care population.

May 23, 2007

Preventing catheter-associated bloodstream infections: a survey of policies for insertion and care of central venous catheters from hospitals in the Prevention Epicenter Program.

January 18, 2006

Improving adverse drug event detection in critically ill patients through screening intensive care unit transfer summaries.

July 31, 2013

The cost of opioid–related adverse drug events.

October 8, 2014

Using improvement science methods to increase accuracy of surgical consents.

September 17, 2014

Anatomy of a cyberattack: part 4: quality assurance and error reduction, billing and compliance, transition to uptime.

April 27, 2022

Utilising improvement science methods to optimise medication reconciliation.

April 13, 2011

Patient-centered prescription opioid tapering in community outpatients with chronic pain.

March 7, 2018

Surgical safety checklist: implementation in an ambulatory surgical facility.

May 1, 2013

Unplanned early hospital readmission among critical care survivors: a mixed methods study of patients and carers.

June 27, 2018

Bracing for the storm: one health care system's planning for the COVID-19 surge.

November 11, 2020

Evaluating a mobile application for improving clinical laboratory test ordering and diagnosis.

May 23, 2018

Mitigating errors caused by interruptions during medication verification and administration: interventions in a simulated ambulatory chemotherapy setting.

July 2, 2014

Measuring adverse events and levels of harm in pediatric inpatients with the Global Trigger Tool.

October 24, 2012

Developing an action plan for patient radiation safety in adult cardiovascular medicine.

April 11, 2012

Computerized dose range checking using hard and soft stop alerts reduces prescribing errors in a pediatric intensive care unit.

November 19, 2014

June 28, 2023

Disparities in racial, ethnic, and payer groups for pediatric safety events in US hospitals.

February 28, 2024

Use of high-fidelity simulation to enhance interdisciplinary collaboration and reduce patient falls.

May 10, 2017

Missed nursing care in pediatrics.

July 12, 2017

Incorporating harms into the weighting of the Revised AHRQ Patient Safety for Selected Indicators Composite (PSI 90).

January 26, 2022

Medical team training and coaching in the veterans health administration; assessment and impact on the first 32 facilities in the programme.

August 18, 2010

Using a network organisational architecture to support the development of Learning Healthcare Systems.

February 21, 2018

Code debriefing from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Team Training Program improves the cardiopulmonary resuscitation code process.

September 1, 2010

Related Resources

Annual Perspective

Equity in Patient Safety

March 27, 2024

Power of saying ‘I Don’t Know’: psychological safety and participatory strategies for healthcare leaders.

March 13, 2024

Responding to medical errors — implementing the modern ethical paradigm.

January 31, 2024

When mistakes multiply: how inadequate responses to medical mishaps erode trust in American medicine.

December 6, 2023

The future of engaging patients and families for patient safety.

October 18, 2023

Five strategies for how patients and families can improve patient safety: World Patient Safety Day 2023.

October 4, 2023

Widespread misinterpretation of advance directives and Portable Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatments threatens patient safety and causes undertreatment and overtreatment.

July 12, 2023

Disclosing medical errors: prioritising the needs of patients and families.

July 5, 2023

Structural racism and adverse maternal health outcomes: a systematic review.

December 21, 2022

What I wish I’d known: how experienced physician managers diagnose, treat and prevent disruptive behaviour.

September 21, 2022

How cisgender clinicians can help prevent harm during encounters with transgender patients.

August 24, 2022

A family and hospital's journey and commitment to improving diagnostic safety.

March 9, 2022

Patient and clinician experiences of uncertainty in the diagnostic process: current understanding and future directions.

November 10, 2021

Implementing patient and family involvement interventions for promoting patient safety: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

February 17, 2021

Safety of surgical telehealth in the outpatient and inpatient setting.

January 13, 2021

Impact of providing patients access to electronic health records on quality and safety of care: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

July 8, 2020

How to "DEAL" with disruptive physician behavior.

February 12, 2020

Addressing the elephant in the room: a shame resilience seminar for medical students.

August 28, 2019

Professionalism lapses and adverse childhood experiences: reflections from the island of last resort.

August 14, 2019

'Poking the skunk': ethical and medico-legal concerns in research about patients' experiences of medical injury.

July 17, 2019

Physician impairment and rehabilitation: reintegration into medical practice while ensuring patient safety: a position paper from the American College of Physicians.

June 19, 2019

Capturing patients' perspectives on medication safety: the development of a patient-centered medication safety framework.

May 8, 2019

Saving without compromising: teaching trainees to safely provide high value care.

April 17, 2019

Addressing medicine's bias against patients who are overweight.

March 27, 2019

Association of emotional intelligence with malpractice claims: a review.

February 13, 2019

A prescription for enhancing electronic prescribing safety.

December 12, 2018

Holding out for an apology.

December 5, 2018

Defensive medicine: it is time to finally slow down an epidemic.

November 7, 2018

The need for cognition and the curse of cognition.

October 3, 2018

An integrative review exploring the perceptions of patients and healthcare professionals towards patient involvement in promoting hand hygiene compliance in the hospital setting.

September 12, 2018

See More About The Topic

Psychological and Social Complications

The power of regret.

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

The power of regret.

Connect With Us

Sign up for Email Updates

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue Logged In

Submit Your Innovations

Continue as a Guest

Continue logged in

New Users to the PSNet site