write a short note on medical negligence
Answers
Answer:
Medical negligence also known as medical malpractice is improper, unskilled, or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional. Too err is human but to replicate the same mistake due to one's carelessness is negligence.
Explanation:
Medical negligence is a combination of two words. The second word solely describes the meaning, though the meaning of negligence has not been described in a proper way but it is an act recklessly done by a person resulting in foreseeable damages to the other. Negligence is an offense under tort, IPC, Indian Contracts Act, Consumer Protection Act and many more.
Medical Negligence basically is the misconduct by a medical practitioner or doctor by not providing enough care resulting in breach of their duties and harming the patients which are their consumers. A professional is deemed to be an expert in that field at least; a patient getting treated under any doctor surely expects to get healed and at least expects the doctor to be careful while performing his duties. Medical negligence has caused many deaths as well as adverse results to the patient’s health.
This article focuses on explaining negligence under various laws, professional negligence, medical negligence and landmark as well as recent cases in India. This provides information on liability that can be incurred by the victim of the medical malpractice. It aims at providing information about the topic to create as much awareness as possible.
Medical Negligence
“No doctor knows everything. There’s a reason why it’s called “practising” medicine.”
– Anonymous.
To err is human. Though patients see the doctors as God and believe that their disease will be cured and they will be healed by the treatment but sometimes even the doctors makes mistakes which can cost a lot to the patients in many ways. Sometimes the mistakes are so dangerous that a patient has to suffer immensely.
“In my opinion, our health care system has failed when a doctor fails to treat an illness that is treatable.”[i]
– Kevin Alan Lee.
“Being in such a profession where sick, ill and sufferers are your customers who look upon you as the almighty, an absolute amount of care is expected.”
This kind of mistake is called negligence. If an owner of the restaurant can be sued for providing low quality of food then even a doctor can be sued for providing low quality of treatment and care.
Medical negligence also known as medical malpractice is improper, unskilled, or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional.[ii] Medical malpractice occurs when a health-care provider strays from the recognized “standard of care” in the treatment of a patient.
The “standard of care” is defined as what a reasonably prudent medical provider would or would not have done under the same or similar circumstances.
“The important question isn’t how to keep bad physicians from harming patient; it’s how to keep good physicians from harming patients. – Atul Gawande[iii].
It is unreasonably threatening practice and it is classified as such because first, the actor did or should have foreseen that it would subject another to an adverse risk of harm, and second, the magnitude of the perceivable risk was such that the actor should have acted in a safe manner.[iv]
Mistakes or Negligence in medical profession may lead to minor injuries or some serious kinds of injuries and sometimes these kinds of mistakes may even cause death. Since no man is perfect in this world, it is evident that a person who is skilled and has knowledge over a particular subject can also commit mistakes during his practice. Too err is human but to replicate the same mistake due to one’s carelessness is negligence. The fundamental reason behind medical error or medical negligence is the carelessness of the said doctors or medical professionals it can be observed in various cases where reasonable care is not taken during the diagnosis, during operations, sometimes while injecting anaesthesia etc.
For example, after a severe operation of a patient, he is likely to get infected by many diseases because of certain reason which can include loss of blood, weakness, high dose of medicines. In due course a standard care is expected from the doctor to give premedication regarding certain infectious diseases. If a doctor fails to do so due to which a patient suffers from some infection which can cause a lot of harm or even death in adverse cases, the doctor is said to have committed medical negligence or malpractice.
Negligence
There are distinct definitions for negligence. It is the omission to do something which a reasonable man, guided by those considerations which ordinarily regulate the conduct of human affairs, would do or doing something which a prudent and reasonable man would not do. It must be determined in all cases by reference to the situation and knowledge of the parties and all the attendant circumstances.[v]