Doctors in Trouble: A study of their experience of complaints

Regulatory mechanisms including complaints aim to protect the public by remedying identified problems with doctors’ performance, conduct or health. Existing literature has consistently found that the experience leaves many doctors emotionally, physically and psychologically harmed, and many undergo behavioural changes. These effects can affect family, friends and colleagues, and their work, so patients may also suffer when a doctor is not practising optimally. This study aims to explore the underlying reasons. Australian doctors were invited to share their experience and to explore what it was about the process that caused them consternation and distress, and how they dealt with it. Using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with seventeen self-selected doctors, a narrative approach enabled a deep examination of doctors’ personal reactions, perceptions and attitudes to the complaints process, of their professional values and beliefs, and the deeper significance of having a complaint. Five expert informants, who provide professional support to doctors, were also interviewed to obtain their perspective on how doctors respond to complaints and how they deal with the process. Administrative issues, uncertainty about how decisions were being made, and perceptions of unfairness were some of the issues, with many perceiving they are being held guilty until they prove themselves innocent, while the adversarial nature of the process made them defensive and cautious. This study confirms the findings of previous research and provides additional value by explaining the underlying reasons for their distress. Contextualised in today’s medico-legal environment, the study shows that the law, once introduced to protect the profession, now exists to protect the public. The consequences of this shift have enhanced the goals of public protection, trust and confidence, but they have also had a profound effect on those doctors who are directly affected

Quantum Gauss Jordan Elimination

In this paper we construct the Quantum Gau\ss Jordan Elimination (QGJE) Algorithm and estimate the complexity time of computation of Reduced Row Echelon Form (RREF) of an $N\times N$ matrix using QGJE procedure. The main theorem asserts that QGJE has computation time of order $2^{N/2}$

Dealing with complaints against doctors without causing further harm

Complaints can create morbidity, defensive practice, loss of trust and confidence in doctors. These effects impact on the doctor, on colleagues, family and patients, the latter due to loss of trust and because a distracted, anxious or depressed doctor may not be practicing safely. The regulatory mechanisms that were set up to protect the public are introducing further risk of harm to patients

Giffen paradoxes in quantum market games

Recent development in quantum computation and quantum information theory allows to extend the scope of game theory for the quantum world. The paper presents the history and basic ideas of quantum game theory. Description of Giffen paradoxes in this new formalism is discussed.Comment: 12 pages (2 figs), LaTe

Quantum state of a free spin-1/2 particle and the inextricable dependence of spin and momentum under Lorentz transformations

We revise the Dirac equation for a free particle and investigate Lorentz transformations on spinors. We study how the spin quantization axis changes under Lorentz transformations, and evince the interplay between spin and momentum in this context.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, published as a Review in the IJQ

Optimal quantum circuits for general phase estimation

We address the problem of estimating the phase phi given N copies of the phase rotation gate u(phi). We consider, for the first time, the optimization of the general case where the circuit consists of an arbitrary input state, followed by any arrangement of the N phase rotations interspersed with arbitrary quantum operations, and ending with a POVM. Using the polynomial method, we show that, in all cases where the measure of quality of the estimate phi' for phi depends only on the difference phi'-phi, the optimal scheme has a very simple fixed form. This implies that an optimal general phase estimation procedure can be found by just optimizing the amplitudes of the initial state.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Transfer information remotely via noise entangled coherent channels

In this contribution, a generalized protocol of quantum teleportation is suggested to investigate the possibility of remotely transfer unknown multiparities entangled coherent state. A theoretical technique is introduced to generate maximum entangled coherent states which are used as quantum channels. We show that the mean photon number plays a central role on the fidelity of the transferred information. The noise parameter can be considered as a control parameter only for small values of the mean photon number