Feel like you’ve got enough to worry about, what with the failing economy, the presidential election, and studying for midterms? Okay, then stop reading this right now. Otherwise, you will discover that a recent survey of 200 doctors conducted by the University of Washington and Washington University found that doctors are less likely to admit to making errors when they are not blantantly incorrect. So maybe you think your doctor is doing you right, but he or she could just think you won’t notice that sneaky little mystery disease…

According to the Wall Street Journal:

Consider two medical scenarios.

In one, a child receives an overdose of insulin and is admitted to the intensive care unit. In the other, a doctor overlooks a lab test, which leads to a child being hospitalized for a serious infection. The insulin overdose would be more apparent to the child’s family, while the overlooked lab test might not be so obvious.

That may partly explain why 75% of pediatricians said they’d definitely report the insulin overdose to the child’s family, but only 33% said they’d definitely report the overlooked lab test. (It’s also worth noting that 89% rated the insulin overdose as a “serious error,” compared with 68% for the overlooked test.)

Those findings, published today in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, come from a survey of about 200 pediatricians conducted (confusingly enough) at the University of Washington in Seattle and Washington University in St. Louis.

Oh Jiminy Cricket, where are you when we need you? We’re just stupid college students who need someone to help get our doctors to ‘fess up from time to time. These ass-covering physicians would do well in politics as well.