Top Patient Safety Concern: Medical Gaslighting

According to the ECRI’s (formerly known as the Emergency Care Research Institute) recent annual report on patient safety concerns for 2025, medical gaslighting is at the top of the list. Medical gaslighting refers to a clinician’s dismissal of a patient’s, caregiver’s, or family’s concerns. The ECRI warns that medical gaslighting has led to misdiagnoses and delayed treatment of patients; it also exacerbates preexisting disparities in healthcare, making it a significant and pressing public health concern.

Nine other patient safety concerns comprised the ECRI’s list, which examines the top ten leading healthcare-related risks that have the largest impact on patients each year. They were:

• The need for robust oversight and governance of artificial intelligence, or AI
• The rapid and widespread availability and dissemination of medical misinformation
• Cybersecurity breaches
• Addressing the unique care that veterans require
• Substandard and falsified (counterfeit) drugs and medications
• Diagnostic errors
• Healthcare-associated infections
• Inadequate communication and coordination of patient discharge, and:
• Deteriorating pharmacy conditions

With all these other pressing issues, why did the ECRI say that medical gaslighting is the number one concern that American patients are facing? The organization referenced a 2023 Health Central survey in which 94% of responders reported instances in which they felt their concerns were ignored or dismissed by a clinician. 58% said their symptoms worsened after their concerns were ignored; 28% reported experiencing a health emergency stemming from their provider’s failure to respond. Yet another compounding factor behind this issue is that data confirms that certain individuals are more likely to have their concerns dismissed by a provider, like black patients and women.

According to the ECRI, the following factors are known to contribute to cases of medical gaslighting:

• Unconscious biases
• Preconceived ideas about specific symptoms
• A lack of awareness that the clinician is exhibiting gaslighting behavior towards patients
• Challenges regarding causes for nonspecific patient complaints
• Cognitive biases in clinical decision-making

To combat these issues, the ECRI recommends facilitating conversations between leadership and staff on the topic of medical gaslighting, limiting staff’s use of “never words”, like “Let’s not worry about that now,” prioritizing workforce diversity and inclusion efforts, and the use of simulation training, tools, and processes that encourage and promote communication between providers and patients.

When to Contact a Philadelphia Medical Malpractice Attorney

You’ve likely heard the story time and time again – a person goes to the doctor complaining that they are experiencing chest pain. The doctor chalks up their symptoms to something like obesity, anxiety, or tobacco use. They fail to run adequate diagnostic testing, and the doctor sends the patient home, but mere minutes or hours later, the patient suffers a myocardial infarction (MI), or heart attack. In fact, our attorneys represented the family of a man who lost his life because his family doctor believed he was having indigestion, failing to recognize the signs and symptoms of the patient’s impending heart attack.

You can read more about this case at: https://www.galfandberger.com/verdicts/Medical-Malpractice/19-2/.

If you believe you were a victim of medical malpractice, someone at our firm can help. Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor, hospital, or medical provider is negligent, including by dismissing or ignoring a patient, caregiver, or family’s concerns, and hurts or kills a patient. Some of the most common types of medical mistakes include misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, birth injuries, anesthesia errors, and failure to treat.

To learn more about filing a medical malpractice claim for your injuries, contact a representative online at our firm now.

Philadelphia Medical Malpractice Attorneys at Galfand Berger, LLP, Representing Injured Victims Since 1947

Contact the Philadelphia medical malpractice attorneys at Galfand Berger LLP today. Call us at 800-222-USWA (8792) or fill out our online form for a free consultation. Located in Philadelphia, Bethlehem, Lancaster, and Reading, we serve clients throughout New Jersey and Pennsylvania, including Allentown and Harrisburg.