NEGLIGENCE

Medical Negligence

Medical Negligence

Introduction

The news/article under review is “Doctor accused of 'gross negligence' in death of Lap-Band patient” by Stuart Pfeifer, which was published in Los Angeles Time on February 04, 2012. The news article explains the death of Tamara Walter who died due to the negligence of Dr. Daniel Shin. The reviewing board accused Dr. Daniel Shin, an anesthesiologist, of "gross negligence" after he Lap-Band implanted Tamara at a clinic in Beverly Hills.

Relevant Facts

From the above mentioned case, we can say that medical uncertainty is reflected in summary statistics on the incidence of avoidable medical injuries, adverse outcomes, medical errors, and malpractice claims.

Data on malpractice claims (legal facts) and medical error (a frequently ambiguous assessment) are skewed by assorted stakeholders, including claimants, defendants, physicians, hospitals, trial lawyers, medical liability insurance companies, and patient advocacy groups, all of whom use different operational definitions of injury and negligence (Strathern, 2000).

Physician estimates focus on res ipsa loquitur cases and exclude systemic errors, such as poor infection control in hospitals. Their estimates of malpractice-caused deaths per year are in the low thousands (e.g., 6,000-12,000).

Estimates by legal interests define practitioner-caused mortality broadly and include systemic errors. Their estimates are as high as 780,000, about one-third of all deaths, making medical errors and negligence a top-three cause of death. Even objective researchers must make assumptions that favor one or another stakeholder.

Elements of negligence

The first element listed, the existence of a doctor-patient relationship, seems obvious but it isn't always so. For instance, a physician who is asked by another physician to see a patient in consultation but who has not yet done so, does not have an established doctor-patient relationship, nor does a physician who happens to be in the hospital when a cardiac arrest announcement is made over the hospital intercom (usually in some cryptic language), if those physicians have not been involved in the care of the patient. In reality, although it is not unheard of for such physicians to originally be named in a malpractice case, the existence of a doctor-patient relationship is usually clear-cut and few cases proceed without such obvious facts.

The second element of a successful malpractice suit, deviation from the standard of care, is usually the most critical and difficult part of a malpractice lawsuit. The plain-tiff' attorney must convince the jury that the physician, nurse, or other medical professional failed in some way to evaluate, diagnose, and treat the patient in a way that other competent clinicians would. The attorney generally tries to do so in a variety of ways, the most powerful of which is to have other medical professionals testify that the doctor did, in fact, deviate from the usual standard of care in one or more ways.

The doctor' attorney tries to refute that position, usually by stressing the doctor' training, experience, prior practices and by presenting his or her own group of medical professionals to assert that the doctor' care was within the standard of ...