Doug Wojcieszak
Doug Wojcieszak is a disclosure training consultant who created Sorry Works! and has trained over 30,000 healthcare, insurance, and legal professionals. Wojcieszak is a sought-after speaker and trainer and the Sorry Works! content (books, booklets, on-line learning, etc) has become the “go to” references for organizations dealing with adverse medical events. Sorry Works! and Wojcieszak recently partnered with The Sullivan Group to provide on-line disclosure training content for healthcare professionals.
Wojcieszak has had several personal and professional experiences with tort reform and medical malpractice issues. He lost his oldest brother to medical errors in 1998 and his family successfully sued the hospital and doctors with the case settling in 2000. The hospital attorneys – not the doctors – empathized with the Wojcieszak family, but only after the case was settled and money exchanged hands, and they never admitted fault or apologized for the incident.
Around the same time his brother’s case was concluding, Mr. Wojcieszak became the Executive Director of Illinois Lawsuit Abuse Watch (I-LAW), a grass-roots, pro-tort reform group. He was able to place over 200 positive stories about lawsuit abuse and capping lawsuit damages with TV, radio, and print media throughout Illinois. During his time with I-LAW, Mr. Wojcieszak also first read and studied full-disclosure methods for medical errors as a way to lower malpractice lawsuits and liability costs as well as reduce medical errors. Mr. Wojcieszak left I-LAW in 2001 and shortly thereafter founded a consulting firm. The firm had several clients, including a pro-plaintiffs group, Victims and Families United (VAFU). He served as the group’s spokesperson in 2004 and touted traditional plaintiffs/anti-tort reform messages such as insurance reform and increased doctor discipline. However, while representing VAFU, Mr. Wojcieszak revisited full-disclosure methods and created a marketing term- “Sorry Works!” - to successfully promote apologies for medical errors as the solution to the medical malpractice crisis. Mr. Wojcieszak was able to place over 50 stories about Sorry Works! during 2004 with numerous media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post Dispatch, CNBC, and a worldwide story through the Associated Press. He noticed that Sorry Works!, while agreeable to many trial lawyers, also attracted the interest and support of many doctors and insurers. These observations led Wojcieszak to create a new, separate group – The Sorry Works! Coalition – in February 2005 solely dedicated to promoting Sorry Works! and full-disclosure methods as a middle ground solution to the malpractice crisis.
The Sorry Works! Coalition has grown quickly to over 4,500 members nationwide, the website has received over 6 million hits, and the group has been publicized in countless popular and trade publications, including Time Magazine, National Review, National Law Journal, and American Medical Association News. Sorry Works! has become a leading disclosure training organization. Mr. Wojcieszak has trained and consulted thousands of healthcare, insurance, and legal professionals on disclosure and apology through his live presentations as well as his weekly e-newsletters, bestselling Sorry Works! Book 2.0, recently released Little Book of Empathy, and webinars.