I took a class on medical ethics and they had an interesting perspective: "you can be sued for any reason; what matters is whether you will be held guilty."
The risk of legal action shouldn't change one's conduct.
back
1 comments
An interesting perspective, but false. Risk of legal action should definitely inform your conduct, unless you want to go broke. You can easily spend all your money paying lawyers to defend you right up until the point you are declared "not guilty" (or in a civil case, until you win). That doesn't make it a good idea.
So yes, you should always try to do the ethical thing. But your moral calculation should at least consider the risk of being sued and take that properly into account.
This is an excellent point. This calculation can change depending on a doctor's employer too. If the doctor is self-employed, the strategy is definitely don't get sued at all because the cost of defending could break the bank.
At a big hospital, the doctor might not have to pay for lawyers personally, but the hospital or the insurance company might have very clearly defined rules for when the lawyers get paid for, so the doctors may not have much choice about treatment.
I'm not aware of the costs involved. Is professional liability insurance prohibilitively expensive or not available to self-employed doctors?
>the doctors may not have much choice about treatment
What do you mean by this?
I think it's reasonable to assume insurance companies will defend a doctor whose conduct is based on solid evidence or law. Are their rules not aligned with current medical practice?
You can as a private doctor carry insurance (at least as far as I have been told). Insurance either way is extremely expensive, because it's so easy to lose a case. The problem is that the law is very complicated when it comes to malpractice. . . . .and it's big money. You may have done everything right and some attorney still finds fault and is able to convince a judge of your wrong doing. Everything gets called into question and rarely are actions black and white
"Did you do this?" "Yes." "Why didn't you do this instead?" "Based on the circumstances, it didn't sound reasonable" "So you're not experienced enough to consider that as an option? Should you be practicing medicine?" etc.
Once you get convicted, that sticks with you like a stigma, even if it's total B.S.
This forces doctors/hospitals/etc. to follow exact established procedures to try and reduce the possibility of getting sued. It's called defensive medicine. Their decisions are what are best for them, and not necessarily in your best interests, and let me say this: I don't blame them for it. Having grown up with doctors, lawyers, and lawyers who defend doctors in my family, I can tell you getting sued positively sucks . . . . except for the plaintiff's legal team, they pretty much win, if they are any good at it.
So the vast majority of doctors are condemned? That sounds like a very unfavorable environment for medical practitioners. I think its only natural to try and protect oneself.
From 2000 to 2004, in one of my country's states, 372 doctors were taken to court but only 23.9% were condemned¹. The number of lawsuits have been increasing ever since; I found a news article with more recent figures from another state but couldn't find the actual source of the numbers. It said 35% of verdicts were guilty.
That's what insurance is for. The problem with dancing in ethical lines is that you're going to get careless and cross over too far.