This commentary raises questions about requiring clinicians to apologize to patients following an adverse event, such as the potential impact on clinicians' ability to make moral judgments. The authors advocate for promoting voluntary apologies through training, culture, and peer support.

In this qualitative interview study, most nurses believed that errors should be disclosed to patients, but few of them reported actually disclosing errors. Barriers to error disclosure included insufficient training, lack of organizational support, and personal fears. These findings are consistent with prior studies of physicians and underscore the difficulty in making error disclosure the standard of care.