What We Know and Don’t Know about the Role of Apologies in Resolving Health Care Disputes

Much of the discussion of how apologies might be beneficial in resolving health care disputes has been based primarily on intuition and incomplete empirical data. This Article attempts to review what is known and not known about apologies in this context. After briefly reviewing recent legislative developments regarding disclosing and apologizing for medical errors, the Article brings together and examines a variety of empirical data — from surveys, experiments, and case studies — that bear on the role of apologies in health care settings and draws attention to avenues of further research.