So what’s important is that doctors learn from mistakes and that learning occurs at scale. The current liability system doesn’t really enable this. There are no effective negative feedback systems in medicine that allow for optimal, efficient learning. Errors get swept under the rug or there’s this bs shaming that goes on. The main questions people should be asking is what can be done better.

Research has shown that harmed patients and families usually just want the following.

1. Honesty about what happened. Unfortunately many doctors lie and conceal errors from patients. This erodes patient trust on a systemic level. Specialty boards lie to patients, professional societies lie to patients, and medical journals publish lies. This is all provable. So how is it at all reasonable for patients to trust doctors in this climate?
2. An apology and explanation. This restores the victims’ dignity. It affirms that they matter, that the harm done to them matters. Instead, doctors commonly blame victims of malpractice for choosing the wrong doctor, or, if elective, for choosing surgery at all. Even if what occurred was a never event, they will tell the patient they should have known all surgery carries risks (which is absurd because never events, like wrong site surgery, should never happen).
3. Something done to improve care for future patients. This rarely happens. Even if all the patient wants is for doctors to simply be trained to do surgeries they are given privileges to do, hospitals and surgery centers will do absolutely nothing unless they get sued. That’s all they care about. And no matter how many patients get harmed, boards continue to certify doctors can do surgeries they aren’t trained to do on anatomy they do not know. And it means nothing until enough doctors get sued.