Does it even need to be said that people in Illinois expect the truth from their doctors? Even if news of a diagnosis is tough or test results came back with the worst possible outcome, we all rely on doctors to give us nothing but the truth because, after all, our health is at stake.

But a recent study raises some concern in that regard because it found that doctors lie more often than you might think, especially when it comes to their own mistakes. A significant portion of those polled in the survey said they did not think patients needed to be told of doctor errors.

The study was performed by researchers from Harvard Medical School and has been published in the February issues of the journal Health Affairs. Its most alarming conclusion is that 34 percent of the physicians surveyed did not "completely agree" that patients should be made aware of medical errors that affected them. The 34 percent of doctors who did not "completely agree" said they either only partially agreed with that statement or did not agree at all.

On top of that, 20 percent of the physicians polled said they had kept a mistake from a patient because they were worried about getting sued.

In a different but related study that examined why doctors withheld information about errors from patients, some doctors said they did not believe they had made a mistake, others said they did not think it mattered because nothing could be done and other said (once again) that they feared the repercussions.

Source: My Health News Daily, "Many docs tell white lies, study finds," Feb. 8, 2012