Newsflash: doctors are people and they have feelings.  Sometimes they make mistakes and feel bad about the errors and apologize.  In some States, those apologies are admissible in court as evidence.  California recently passed a law that allows doctors to express human feelings of regret and to say things like "I'm sorry that your mother died because I forgot to sew her back up and all her organs fell out when she stood up," and their expression of regret is not considered evidence.  The doctor could even say "I'm sorry that your mother died because I forgot to sew her back up and all her organs fell out when she stood up - see I used all the surgical thread to sew a button on my ski suit and I'm pretty bad at sewing so probably I shouldn't be stitching people back up anyway so..." and it still won't count against them in a court of law.

Doctors are traditionally discouraged from expressing regret, even sympathy, for fear of being sued.  Malpractice is big business in the US and thoughts of poverty frighten people with $500,000 in student loans to pay back.  Are these laws helping or hurting Big Medicine?  Stanford claims to have the answer, but it's Stanford so really the truth is anyone's guess.