Yesterday I attended my first lecture on medical malpractice and I was hooked. I’m not going to make a decision just yet, but I think it’s the area of law in which I’d like to specialize. I think it’s the complexity that I find interesting. Looking at the cases we discussed in the lecture, it’s clear that they are very challenging to prosecute and patients need to understand their rights upfront.
I left the lecture understanding just how difficult it is for a patient to prevail in medical malpractice actions. There are many things stacked against them. Not only is there a central malpractice defense fund that hospitals and medical professionals are supported by, but many States have passed legislation making it difficult for patients to get the “certificate of merit” needed to move forward.
Of course I don’t support a litigious culture or ambulance-chasing by attorneys, but I do think that if a hospital or a doctor has been negligent to a patient and injured them in some way, the right to pursue compensation should be available to them. But patients also need to take responsibility for their own actions. And it’s incumbent on them to follow instructions they receive from the medical community.
The whole notion of “following instructions” led us into an interesting discussion. The lecturer brought up health information that is available online and asked us to discuss whether this should be wrapped into the whole medical malpractice debate.
Most of us in the lecture theater were broadly supportive of the growth in transparency available online about medical issues. This covers the gamut from serious diseases such as cancer, diabetes and heart disease right through to less serious ones such as nail fungus treatment, skin infections or indigestion. But most of us also agreed that patients should not trust this information blindly. Reading a website is not the same as consulting with a doctor and patients need to know the difference.
Next week we will be discussing the difference between medical malpractice committed by a hospital employee (where the hospital itself may be liable as a result of “respondent superior“) and that committed by a doctor.
no comment untill now