The Ethics Of An Injury

Authors Note: This paper is being submitted on the 18th of March 2013 for the winter semester of Medical Law and Ethics section 05.

A health care provider must understand many aspects of statutory duty. Duty is “a legal obligation imposed on one to conform to a recognized standard of care to safe guard the rights of others”. The standard of care is usually related to medical malpractice cases. Standard of care is defined as “the caution and prudence that a reasonable person would exercise under the circumstances or by appropriate authority for such situations”. This is mainly of importance because all physicians are expected to perform within the guidelines of this duty, and this standard or care changes depending on the circumstances. “Once the duty has been established, the plaintiff must show that it was breached by presenting evidence of the facts of the case and testimony from expert witnesses regarding whether the standard was met”(Showalter, 2014 p 139). Negligence results in the failure to meet this standard of care, and the jury usually decides if the defendant is guilty of committing a negligent act. Causation is an aspect of negligence. The defendant could be held liable for negligence if the act was considered to be foreseeable, and if the injury occurred from a breach of duty.

This duty was then breached. Either care was not administered, or it was ministered improperly. The quality of the care is established through the testimony of expert testimony from other doctors.

This essay is going to talk about healthcare law and breaches of duty of care. Healthcare law is generally tort law. A “tort” is a legal wrong that the law provides a remedy for. The person that suffers the injury is known as the plaintiff and the person said to of caused the injury is known as the defendant or tortfeasor. Tort law originates from the time of the norman conquest in 1066. Tort law is a type of civil law and tortious wrongs are known as civil wrongs. Tort covers a range of things from trespass to negligence. Negligence is the most common area of tort law that healthcare professionals will come across.

In certain situations, a duty of care is owed to another person. For example, a surgeon owes a duty of care to whoever they operate on. The existence of a duty of care is established by the Neighbour Test which was brought in by Lord Aitken after the Donoghue v Stevenson case;

Duty is the responsibility that a doctor has to a patient. A patient has to prove that a

Breach of Duty: if a doctor performs surgery on the wrong patient, they breached their duty by failing to protect the patient.

malpractice and negligence. The Darling's (Plaintiff) felt that the hospital, nursing staff and emergency room doctor all played an important part in the Plaintiff losing his leg due to neglect.

The first legal concepts we will cover are Torts. By definition a tort is a civil wrong or wrongful act, whether intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another. Now when dealing with torts the first question that needs to be answer is a question of liability. There are: intentional liability, negligence liability, and strict

The relationship between breach of duty and standard of care is ,Breach of duty is the failure to practice reasonable legal and moral action as it pertains to the law and standards of care is the degree in which a person practices reasonable legal and

Prima facie, it appears that it was Mr Stephens’ negligence in neglecting to inform Mr Dick of the live electrical connection that led to the damages suffered by Mr Harley. This raises the first issue of law (or combined fact and law) as to whether Mr Stephens owed Mr Harley a duty of care at all.

Torts of negligence are breaches of duty that results to injury to another person to whom the duty breached is owed. Like all other torts, the requirements for this are duty, breach of duty by the defendant, causation and injury(Stuhmcke and Corporation.E 2001). However, this form of tort differs from intentional tort as regards the manner the duty is breached. In torts of negligence, duties are breached by negligence and not by intent. Negligence is conduct that falls below the standard of care established by law for the protection of others against unreasonable risk of harm(Stuhmcke and Corporation.E 2001). The standard measure of negligence is the universal reasonable person standard. The assumption in this case is that a reasonable

Presented are four separate cases that have been argued and settled in a court of law. Each of these cases represent a different kind of tort, a tort is a civil wrong or wrongful act, which can be either intentional or accidental, from which injury occurs to another (Hill & Hill n.d.). The torts are as listed, intentional, criminal, negligence, and liability as presented in the four researched cases.

Negligence is the failure to exercise due care or diligence that a reasonable or prudent man would exercise in similar circumstances. The law of negligence falls under tort law where it involves harm that is caused by carelessness and not intentional harm (Katter, 2002). A tort is a civil wrong that is in the form of a breach of duty, which amounts to legal remedy that is awarded in damages. Tort law rests upon two principles that state that an act or omission by the defendant interferes with the rights of the plaintiff, which in turn causes damages (Trindade, 2007). Secondly, the interference caused by the defendant gives rise to a cause of action for damages that are as near as possible to the plaintiff’s loss. Therefore, negligence can be defined as doing something that a reasonable man would not have done in similar circumstances or failure to do what a reasonable man would have done which amounts to infliction of harm.

In Gregg v Scott, Mr. Malcolm Gregg (‘the claimant’), the House of Lords examined the law of negligence in the area of personal injury. In order for the claimant to have a successful claim in court, the onus to shifts to the claimant to demonstrate that a duty of care owed by the doctor, there was a breach of that duty, an injury was sustained, and the negligence on behalf of the doctor Dr. Andrew Scott (‘defendant’) was a cause of the ‘injury’. If these elements are not satisfied, the claimant may lose its entitlement to full compensation.