Tuesday 23 April 2013

Medical Malpractice, A Crime or a Mistake

Doctors are the source of hope when masses come across ailments, and when expectation level raises so does the responsibility. But how many times do we see that a doctor has been accused of negligence while taking care of a medical case. Doctors are humans, and we all have our off days don’t we? No doctor in any part of the US comes into the medical room with an intention to cause harm or damage to any of its patient. They are always looking to help people and reduce the suffering of humanity.


In past few years it has been a trend where many journals reported mortality of some 80,000 individuals in the USA each year due to medical malpractice. Meanwhile, a sure study disclosed that each doctor or relatives members have been victims of a preventable medical mistake.  The improper administration of drugs causes injury to over 1 .3 million persons yearly because of doctor prescription errors such as mislabeling , using incomplete patient knowledge , miscommunication of drugs and mistaking drugs with similar names. But does this only come down to doctors while writing a prescription to make sure it doesn’t have any error on it? When the matter is health then everyone who is part of the process needs to step in and make sure there is no error left. A patient or its family need to review the prescription and discuss it with the pharmacist while making the purchase. The medical literature needs to be studied through and thorough before consuming the medicine. Well these are just a few thoughts as we all have one objective, better healthcare and no medical malpractice lawsuits.

Above discussion provides a clear rationalization of medical malpractice. As, when a doctor negligently does something that a reasonable physician would not have done in that case or when appropriate action was not taken when it should have been - that is what one calls medical malpractice. We can say that this discussion over the medical malpractice crisis has become a no - win situation for the politicians and the medical practitioners. With this crisis of medical malpractice , American Medical Student Association or the AMSA calls on both sides to commit to comprehensive reform of the medical malpractice technique , putting patients ' safety and justice first . Moreover, AMSA has revealed some figures which could confirm that a comprehensive reform regarding medical malpractice is much needed some of which are:
  • The annual cost to society for medical errors is 17 billion to 29 billion.
  • Only 5% of doctors are responsible for 54% of medical malpractice payouts.
  • Only 8% of doctors with two or more medical malpractice payouts have been disciplined by their state medical board.

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