To the Editor The recently published study by Finn and colleagues,1 which showed no substantial association of increased attending physician supervision with preventable error rate, raises questions about the study intervention, sources of reported errors, and future efforts in this area.
Better understanding of the supervision “dose” in the intervention group is essential for interpreting its lack of influence on error rates. The scope of reviewed data and the content of attending physicians’ comments across groups were not reported. Without these data, the reported mean speaking time by faculty (2 vs 13 minutes out of 202-minute rounds) indirectly suggests that faculty may have concurred with the plurality of care plans in both groups and that the increased supervision was mostly reflected by residents’ perceptions.