It's a Material World: Fitness to Hold License to Practise as a System Reliability Matter

Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center 

Longitudinal studies on occupational outcomes are often disadvantaged by a lack of reliable data. Examination of failure‑time distributions can help formulate hypotheses on underlying mechanisms. Data from administrative records of United Kingdom (UK) registered physicians who qualified between 1968 and 2019 was linked with data on judicial decisions (Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service, MPTS) on charges of malpractice. An MPTS case was treated as a 'failure', facilitating the use of the methods of reliability theory. The merged dataset had 454 men (81.65%) and 102 women 18.35% (n= 556). Men were about 4.5 times as likely as women to face MPTS. The time to MPTS showed a strong right skew and lognormal and Weibull fits showed the latter fits to be superior. Males had a higher Weibull shape parameter (p=5.41) than females (p=1.75), suggesting differences in offending between the sexes. The superior fit of the Weibull, particularly with a high shape parameter for males, suggests a weakest‑link or early‑vulnerability model of malpractice risk. This is the first study to empirically examine malpractice risk in physicians using UK administrative data. These findings are of importance in planning for risk mitigation.

System reliability

Computer graphics

Economic statistics 

Business and Economic Statistics Section