Medical Malpractice Law

Yes, to error is human but that really doesn't appear to be the problem here. A great deal of the problem appears to be that a percentage of health care providers make multiple errors because no one stops them. According to Grayson and Singh many nurses do not recommend their place of employment to their family and friends.

When people are not held accountable for their actions and the consequences of those actions everyone is endangered. Taking or being forced to take personal responsiblity for your actions and their consequences plays a large part in how many mistakes you make.

I would think it would be every irresponsible health care provider's nightmare to literally have to personally experience everything that they inflict on their patients.

Since health care providers are safe from the magic wishing wand, the next best thing is to guard against such mistakes and be public with the information. It is a matter of ethics. When you are ten and don't want to "rat out" a buddy it is rarely life or death. But health care providers are not ten anymore and it is their ethical obligation to put the safety their patients or potential patients first. Please read this book and tell others about it. All of our lives depend on it.

American health care is in crisis because of exploding medical malpractice litigation. Insurance premiums for doctors and malpractice lawsuits are skyrocketing, rendering doctors both afraid and unable to afford to continue to practice medicine. Undeserving victims sue at the drop of a hat, egged on by greedy lawyers, and receive eye-popping awards that insurance companies, hospitals, and doctors themselves struggle to pay. The plaintiffs and lawyers always win; doctors, and the nonlitigious, always lose; and affordable health care is the real victim.

This, according to Tom Baker, is the myth of medical malpractice, and as a reality check he offers The Medical Malpractice Myth, a stunning dismantling of this familiar, but inaccurate, picture of the health care industry. Are there too many medical malpractice suits? No, according to Baker; there is actually a great deal more medical malpractice, with only a fraction of the cases ever seeing the inside of a courtroom. Is too much litigation to blame for the malpractice insurance crisis? No, for that we can look to financial trends and competitive behavior in the insurance industry. Are these lawsuits frivolous? Very rarely. Point by point, Baker—a leading authority on insurance and law—pulls together the research that demolishes the myths that have taken hold about medical malpractice and suggests a series of legal reforms that would help doctors manage malpractice insurance while also improving patient safety and medical accountability.

President Bush has made medical malpractice reform a priority in his last term in office, but if history is any indication, legislative reform would only worsen the situation and perpetuate the gross misunderstanding of it. The debate surely will be transformed by The Medical Malpractice Myth, a book aimed squarely at general readers but with radical conclusions that speak to the highest level of domestic policymaking.

Practically every radiologist would benefit from an all-encompassing guide to malpractice issues in radiology. Dr. Ronald Eisenberg, a highly respected author in the field, has put together a comprehensive reference to provide radiologists with an introduction to malpractice issues and a basic understanding of their relationships with government regulatory agencies and HMOs. This softcover book will detail the mechanics of a lawsuit, how radiologists can become the object of a malpractice action, and what they can do to minimize potential exposure.

Healthcare providers are terrified when called to give a deposition. Often, they are offered little aid or don't understand the rationale behind instructions. This book is the life vest to keep medical workers afloat through this process. Written by a physician and creator of The Inquisition Seminars lecture series, it explains differences in medical and legal reasoning, defines standard of care as a tool of plaintiff counsel, guides in understanding medical malpractice coverage, details the interrogation process and summarizes the pitfalls to which most healthcare personnel are oblivious. The Healthcare Providers Guide to Facing the Malpractice Deposition is the book that the medical work force will be too scared to be without.

Uribe is more interested in disparaging the plaintiff's lawyer, using various and predictable words to describe them. But that does not do the reader an injustice and, to be plain, does not bother me in the least. If those buying Uribe's book are my future deponents, I am in good shape. And why?

First, she gives the doctor-defendant a false sense of security. "It is my opinion that medical malpractice litigation rarely has anything to do with the bad practice of medicine. Medical dissatisfaction would be a more appropriate term. The complaintant is unhappy with an outcome and wants compensation in the form of money," Uribe reports on pg. 42.

What?? A patient who had the wrong arm amputated is merely dissatisfied? A small child doomed to a lifetime of paralysis because of negligent hospital care is only unhappy with the outcome? A patient with loose and failing dental implants is only in it for the money? What on earth is Uribe thinking? Are those injured by physician malfeasance in those instances only trying to make a buck?

The problem is, there is no advice in this book worth taking. It is either war stories (Uribe has been a frequent defendant, leading me to ask other questions) or screeds about evil plaintiffs or the expert witnesses who will testify on their behalf.

To Uribe, plaintiff experts are traitors, rats telling on their own kind and not doctors concerned about the purity of their profession and the regard in which it is held. Giving some creedence to the possible legitmacy of some malpractice actions would make Uribe so much more credible. Instead, she used this platform to rank on those that have deposed and sued her.

The real danger is that the advice that is given is fantastically wrong. On page 18, Uribe tells a story about an emergency room doctor and nurse who come within seconds of giving the wrong medicine. They realize it at the last second, and the day is saved.

Uribe goes on to ask if they hadn't caught their error, would that have been negligent? The answer is an obvious yes. Only Uribe is relating the anecdote to describe to the reader what the legal definition is of the standard of care (meaning the level of care that keeps a doctor OUT of trouble).

"Were the doctor and/or nurse negligent? Was the medication misplaced with the intent of harming the patient? Was there a willful disregard for this critical patient's well-being?," Uribe asks, somewhat rhetorically.

Only she is NOT describing negligence there. Questions of intentional actions of willful conduct are separate and distinct areas of the law. As some may know, you need not act intentionally or willfully to be negligent. Merely doing less than the standard of care is negligence.

The problem is Uribe has no idea what she is talking about. She relates stories about how doctors obfuscated during depositions. But then makes positively no mention about how such conduct hurts a defendant's cause. Trying to outlawyer the lawyer on the "other side" is no better an idea than giving the lawyer a scalpel and telling him to operate.

If you are in need of this book because you are a doctor being sued, don't buy it. Instead, go to Martindale Hubbard, find the preeminent malpractice defense lawyer in a major metropolitan area near you, call him or her, spend the $1000 on an appointment and find out precisely what to do and what not to do. What should you be asking the lawyer provided to you by the insurance company. Get a second opinion before the action gets heavy. Then you will know what to worry about and what to put aside. Which is where you should put this book.