Qualitative evaluation of an educational intervention to reduce medicolegal risks for medical doctors experiencing significantly more cases than their peers in the UK and Ireland

Objectives

The Medical Protection Society (MPS) is a leading protection organisation for healthcare professionals worldwide. In the UK and Ireland, a small minority of MPS members experience significantly more medicolegal cases than their peers and are invited to participate in a risk education (RE) remediation process. To understand more about this educational intervention, we sought to explore participating doctors' views of their experiences of this process and identify self-reported performance improvements and what elements of the intervention could be improved.

Design

Qualitative semistructured telephone interviews with a convenience sample of doctors with significantly more medicolegal cases than their peers identified by MPS.

Setting

UK and Ireland MPS members.

Participants

A convenience sample of 20 general medical practitioners and hospital specialists from a total of 79 who completed the RE process (25.3% response rate), with a particular focus on the Member Risk Review programme, between November 2013 and October 2015.

Results

19 participants were male and 16 were based in general medical (office) practice. Three key themes were generated: personal and professional impacts and actions (eg, member has taken action to reduce clinical workload); comprehension and validity of RE interventions (eg, risks were related to wider patient management); and feedback and proposals (eg, the supportive nature of the educational interventions should be clear from the start). A number of recommendations were made by participants to improve the RE process and enhance the educational experience.

Conclusions

The RE process was largely valued by participants with many reporting that participation led to some positive professional behaviour changes and improvements in practice processes and personal well-being.

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