Medical Malpractice and Tort Reform
Medical Malpractice consists of negligence committed by a medical professional. There are many possible events that can occur in the practice of medicine. When physician make a medical error it could possible result in an injury. We often put our faith in doctor to make the right medical decision for us. However, medical malpractice does not always hold up since some patient can take advance of the system. There are some defenses that exist when talking about the medical malpractice.
Initial doctors are there to help aid person to feel better whether it’s a common cold or for other medical treatment. Doctors always try to do what right for the patient and make sure they abide but all rules and regulations. However, some doctors be put in situation that deemed unfair, likely do with the patient not satisfied with the doctors. While some patients will try to create sometime false negligence there are some defenses that help doctors through the medical malpractice claims such as the contributory negligence, respectable minority principle and statute of limitations just to name a few.
Defenses
Contributory Negligence allows the medical professional to seek out negligence of the patients if the root of their injury was sought to be the blame of the patient and not of the medical profession. Thomson Reuters (2015) explains that this negligence can be due to the patient not following directions and mixing up the prescriptions or failure to give
What is malpractice? The given definition is improper, illegal, or negligent professional activity or treatment, especially by a medical practitioner, lawyer, or public official. These cases are occurring more all over the state than they should be due to human era. The people at the hands of doctors are being let down as well as left with disfiguration or even death. These cases are leaving people to question their surgeons as well as the nurses attending with them.
Medical malpractice lawsuits are an extremely serious topic and have affected numerous patients, doctors, and hospitals across the country. Medical malpractice is defined as “improper, unskilled or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional” (Medical malpractice, n.d.). If a doctor acts negligent and causes harm to a patient, malpractice lawsuits arise. Negligence is the concept of the liability concerning claims of medical malpractice, making this type of litigation part of tort law. Tort law provides that one person may litigate negligence to recover damages for personal injury. Negligence laws are designed to deter careless behavior and also to
Broadly speaking, malpractice is the failure of a medical professional to fulfill his or her obligation to treat you properly. Unlike other personal injury claims, the juries and judges in malpractice cases must look at the standards set for reasonable medical care. While personal injury cases are based on the responsibilities of a normal person, malpractice cases are based on the responsibilities of a healthcare professional.
Negligence is the failure to do something. Many medical cases are filed as medical malpractice suits, “medical malpractice is professional misconduct. Malpractice differs from negligence because it is performed by a license medical professional” (Flight 2). The case of Horton V. Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center can be used as a primary example where negligence, “failure to take reasonable precautions to protect others from the risk of harm” (Flight 33), is visible.
For decades doctors have been revered, respected, and regarded as “saviors,” but what medical practitioners and health officials do not reveal is that there are some doctors that are unlawfully practicing medicine, and nothing is being done to stop them. Medical malpractice is the illegal or improper practice of medicine. Unfortunately, this is far too common. The people that are victims of malpractice often get no compensation for the problems a physician has created. Although doctors are trusted individuals and have a right to provide medical advice, perform surgeries, and prescribe medicine, patients should also be able to have more control and security in their medical dealings through new laws and regulations.
A second issue is malpractice. Malpractice issues are always present in an unstable environment where patients will seek to remedy an incident if they feel they have been harmed (Hamric, 2009). It is important to always act in a reasonable way as a health care clinician but unfortunately there are always those who are negligent in their actions as practitioners.
Medical malpractice, the negligence of a health professional in diagnosing, treating, and or caring for a patient, is a specific tort law under the negligence torts. In the medical field, the tort reform has affected many people including doctors, lawyers, insurance company owners and workers, patients, and including other citizens. While large corporations, doctors, and other defendants are benefitting from caps on damages, that is limiting the amount of money that can be granted in court, plaintiffs, lawyers, and citizens are affected differently. Doctor Sage stated in an interview that he has, “never felt that caps on damages had a major effect on patients one way or the other” (“Could Malpractice”). This remark makes those injured question about
Medical malpractice differs from a standards negligence claim and some states have different definitions. There are two primary formulations for the legal standard of
Medical malpractice, is misconduct that usually involves failing of a physician to follow a standard of care, which results in harm to a patient.
In other words, carelessness or unintentionally commissioned act that a reasonable person would do under the same circumstances. For instance, a patient goes to the emergency room with chest pain, but the doctor fails to diagnose the condition and sends the patient home. As a result, the patient later suffers a massive heart attack. In this example, the doctor did not intent to cause harm, however, he or she did fail to exercise a reasonable level of care to properly make a correct diagnose. Furthermore, it would be very difficult to prove the doctor acted negligently, but injury and cause can be proven in this case. Malpractice and negligence fall under the same umbrella, which makes it synonymous and difficult to comprehend; accordingly, many lawsuits are filed to encompass both
Health risk the growth of mal practice and the deposition of quality care needs improvement, many patients are not receiving the fair treatment due compensation. Patients liability should be upheld within any health facility The safety for patients and medical liability is important in healthcare because many physicians have obligations required to be fulfilled by law to make sure the quality of care is done in a professional manner.federal law has created an legal system that still faces issues dealing with quality of care.Many health physicians still lack accuracy when it comes to a patients liability. Malpractice has not made the right changes to set forth better effort to the improvement of quality health care.The way courts handle
Alexis- Negligence and Intentional torts both contribute to the health industry. Negligence is something that most people sue for, and all health professionals should understand how to avoid these situations. For example: the physician should make sure he/she has a complete understanding about the individual medical need, before releasing them. By doing this they can avoid the chances of misdiagnosing or creating mire problems. Protecting the patients right is and should a mission for each health provider to avoid a potential law suit. All professional should be knowledgeable about the importance of intentional torts a how to avoid crossing that path. Fastidious discussion post for this module, keep up the good work.
Medical malpractice happens when a hospital, doctor or other health care professional, perform negligence through their practice and causes an injury to a patient, it may be the result of mistakes in diagnosis, management and after care or health management. (Podgers, 2007)
Negligence happens when a “person’s actions fall below a certain level of care. Negligence can involve doing something carelessly or failing to do something that should have been done.” (Fremgen, 2009, p. 35). In order to prove negligence the plaintiff must present the following elements: 1) duty to care, 2) breach of duty to care, 3) injury and 4) causation (Pozgar, 2012, p. 33). Duty to care is the first element which deals with the care that the defendant (physician) owes the plaintiff (the patient).
Imagine you are injured or sick and have sought a doctor’s help. Although you trusted your doctor, something, something seemingly very in control of the doctor, went wrong. You are angry and confused, but also think of the commonality of medical malpractice. So, why do doctors, who are supposed to help, harm? Though many flaws influence it, malpractice can be, and often is unintentional. Most doctors aren’t trained to harm their patients. Inexperience and lack of medical discovery led to unintentional suffering of the patient. Personal flaws, like lack of willingness to abandon previous medical methods and shortcomings in communication also harm patients. Further reasons why doctors harm are socio-medical understandings that breed hate, prejudices stemming from a society’s belief about certain people, such as the medical practice under the Nazi regime. Additionally, displayed in the case of Ignác Semmelweis, judgement of one to oneself can be detrimental to any progress one’s ideas could make. We will examine these concepts through Jerome Groopman’s “Flesh-and-Blood Decision Making”, Sherwin Nuland’s The Doctors’ Plague and Barbara Bachrach’s “In the Name of Public Health”. Those who practice medicine are, unfortunately, unfree from the imperfections that plague all of humanity. Through these intimate and varied faults, doctors do harm.