Purpose: Investigation the causes of medical complaints and efforts to reduce it still further step towards the satisfaction of patients and medical staff. The aim of this study was to determine the causes and motivations of the complaint, the amount and type of malpractice done on the field of surgery and at the end provide solutions to reduce medical malpractice.
Materials and Methods: This study was a prospective cross-sectional study. The complaint cases in surgery field which referred to the Legal Medicine Organization Commission over a period of 5 years from the beginning of 2017 to 2022 were evaluated. Sampling method was census. Refer to the archives office of the Commissioner of Legal Medicine Organization of Tehran, Records and information relevant to the complaint was gathered and extracted. The data collected were entered into SPSS software version 16 and analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistical tests.
Findings: In the study period, 406 cases were included into the study, which 215 cases (53.0%) were male. Mean age of patients was 43.5± 17.08 year. Mean age of physicians was 52.73± 10.17 year. 90.9% of physicians were male and most of them were non-academic staff (64.0%).  In 365 cases (9/89%), cause of complaint was acting on the surgical procedure. In 284 cases (70%) cases of complaints made about a non-emergency procedure performed on patients. The most common complaints were generated in deceased patients (28/3%). Medical malpractice confirmed in 164 cases (40.4%). Most of the designated malpractice was negligence with 80 cases (19.7% of all cases and 48.8% of malpractice cases), respectively. Average percentage of negligence assigned to physicians was 20.73±20.34% with a median of 10 percent. There was not significant correlation between the percentages of negligence or malpractice with age, sex, measures taken, the experience and expertise of the physician (p> 0.05). Malpractice rate was significantly higher in non-emergency cases versus emergency (43.3 vs 33.6%) (p= 0.04). However, there was no significant correlation between the percentage of negligence and malpractice with urgency of act and site of medical service (p>0.05). Agreement rate between result of first commission and medical malpractice was 0.84.
There was no significant relationship between education level, occupation and age of patients with their re complaining. But sex was significantly associated with the original protest vote (51.8% in women versus 42.3% for men) (p=0.04).
Conclusion: Our results show high frequency of negligence assignment in surgeons. In addition perform appropriate educational training in the field of patient selection, good communication with patients can be more effective in reducing the burden of patient’s complaints against this group and play important role in malpractice judgments issued against them.