Defensive medicine: a practice in whose defense?

Abstract Cases of litigation against physicians have been growing in Brazil: there are currently three new lawsuits filed per hour related to alleged medical error. The purpose of this study was to analyze if both the physician who is sued and the physician who knows another physician who has been sued change their clinical behavior due to the fear of appearing as a defendant in a lawsuit seeking compensation for medical error. In all, 104 questionnaires were answered by physicians of 28 different specialties, 53 (51%) being women and 51 (49%) being men. The relationship between variables such as marital status, the average time since graduation, employment links, among others, and the daily practice of defensive medicine. The study aims to promote the debate about the change in clinical behavior due to the physician’s interest in not being sued by removing the link between their conduct and the patient’s diagnostic hypothesis.