Medical Negligence It was rightly said by Richard Seizer “If people understood that doctors weren't divine, perhaps the odor of malpractice might diminish.” For a patient, the doctor is like God. And, the almighty can never commit any mistake but that is what the patient thinks or believes. In reality, doctors are human beings. And, to err is human. Doctors may commit a mistake, but committing a mistake due to one’s own carelessness is defined as negligence.
Hence the relationship between medical professional and patients is more like a consumer who takes the service from the later who provides that service. Therefore the patients enjoy all rights of the consumer. Previously medical professional was mainly worried about failing to save the life of a patient or providing satisfactory treatment to a sick person. However, now they also worry about the legal consequences of their failure due to change in the relationship. Medical Negligence and medical malpractices are misconstrued as the same thing but both are different and are also distinguished in law.
i. Professional values and ethics According to Li (2006), one of the reasons why corruption is wide-spreading in hospitals is the miss of medical ethics. When lacking of proper sense of medical ethics, staff tend to treat the relationship between doctors and patients as simple production and consumption, that is, they spare no effort on getting profit from their patients, which is unacceptable. Thus, the education of professional values and ethics is
Certain laws and bills have been put in place to discourage people from suing doctors for problems that are completely out of the doctor’s hands. The AANS, American Association of Neurological Surgeons, states that a “Bill is common sense, proven, comprehensive medical liability reform that will help contain health care costs” (Kindy). Doctors are constantly afraid and fearful that they will get sued for reasons that they can not explain. No doctor is safe from lawsuit abuse (Pear). Lawmakers understand this and they wanted to begin to put regulations on
Why doctors make mistakes The reasons doctors make mistakes is such a controversial topic, All humans make mistakes but why are doctors being asked when they do? The reason doctors are questioned is because their mistakes have some much bigger consequences than laymans’. It 's people who work in life-oriented professions whom their actions have a broader impact. Another reason that explains asking such question is how doctors are perceived by the society, our angle of view put a huge pressure on their shoulders, as they 're seen as a machines aren 't allowed to make mistakes. While the truth is different.
. It is not sufficient that the medical professional acted in good faith to best of his or her judgement and belief. The question in every case would be whether the medical practitioner in fact attained the degree of due care established by law. Medical negligence is a sub species of this tort (civil wrong) which falls within the larger species of professional negligence. Under our law, medical negligence, like other forms of negligence, is a criminal offence for which a doctor can even be imprisoned.
In other words, since they are diagnosed with a medical condition, the individual cannot always fulfil the same duties that a person in good health can. Society then adapts to this situation and allows for a reasonable amount of deviation from behaviour that would be viewed as typical of a well person. Parsons saw the sick role as a form of deviance , or going against societal expectations because a person who is sick has different patterns of behaviours than the norm. He argued that being ‘sick’ means that the sufferer enters a role of ‘sanctioned deviance ’, as people are generally expected to be productive members of society. When a person becomes sick or ill, that individual is not able to perform their usual duties, such as work at a job, go to school or care for family members; this deviance from the usual is positively sanctioned or approved by the community or authority figures.
Any negligence by an act or omission of a medical practitioner in performing his/her duty is known as medical negligence. Medical negligence happens when the medical practitioner fails to provide the care which is expected in each case thus resulting in injury or death of the patient. It is important to know what constitutes medical negligence. A doctor owes certain duties to the patient who consults him for illness. A deficiency in this duty results in negligence.
There are many instances where hospital staff faces the embarrassment of not finding required assets. It leads to the situation where staff raises a request for purchase of new equipment and assets. Improper asset management damages financial structure of the hospitals – • Paying insurance premiums to Ghost assets – When an asset of high cost is disposed and if it is not recorded properly, and then Hospitals pay to insure premiums to these assets • Poor recording of assets also affects the reputation of hospitals – When hospital employees fail to remove depreciated equipment from the books after it has been disposed of, the hospital appears to be older on paper than it really is. This can be problematic for hospital executives looking to refinance existing debt or raising new capital for expansion • Unrecorded Assets – Hospitals sometimes have equipment that isn't on the books, which is a cause for concern when the hospital is
TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 2 Need of an Umbrella 3 INTRODUCTION Negligence is simply the failure to exercise reasonable care while performing one’s duty and so is medical negligence. A medical practitioner owes a duty of care towards his patients & in case there is a direct & proximate damage caused by a breach of the duty, the practitioner should be taken into consideration for their accountability for such lack of care in performing his duty. Furthermore, medical negligence is the failure by a medical practitioner to exercise his skills with reasonable competence. In addition, liability is on the practitioner who himself claims to possess the skill which is required to perform the task undertaken. The practitioner is expected to perform