Complaints: their toll, why, and how we need the medical profession to act

In this issue of the Journal, Wilkinson and Marshall confirm what we already know about the impact of complaints on doctors and on other health professionals here in New Zealand. Australian doctors are similarly impacted, despite their somewhat different complaints system. Here and overseas, researchers have documented the emergence of defensive medicine which is another outcome of the complaints process. Despite this, the New Zealand medical profession has not formalised care for doctors in receipt of a complaint, and I believe that the time has come to do so for the sake of doctors’ wellbeing and to improve patient care