Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Preface to the 1997 edition
- Acknowledgments
- About the authors
- Table of cases
- Table of statutes
- 1 Ethical principles for the medical profession
- 2 Ethical and legal responsibilities of medical students
- 3 Communication skills
- 4 Consent and informed decision making
- 5 Confidentiality, privacy and disclosure
- 6 Medical records, reports and certificates
- 7 Negligence, professional liability and adverse events
- 8 The regulation of the medical profession
- 9 Health care complaints systems
- 10 The doctor and sexual boundaries
- 11 Personal health of the doctor: illness and impairment
- 12 Maintenance of professional competence
- 13 Ethics and the allocation of health-care resources
- 14 The Australian health-care system
- 15 The doctor and interprofessional relationships
- 16 Entering and leaving practice and practice management
- 17 Clinical research
- 18 Prescribing and administering drugs
- 19 Diagnosing and certifying death and the role of the coroner
- 20 Births, reproductive technology, family law and child protection
- 21 Termination of pregnancy and related issues
- 22 Withholding or withdrawing treatment in the seriously or terminally ill
- 23 The law and the mentally ill
- 24 The law and courts of law in Australia
- 25 Medico-legal examinations and reports, court procedures and expert evidence
- 26 Other legislation relevant to medical practice
- APPENDIX 1 AMA CODE OF ETHICS – 2004
- Index
- References
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core
7 - Negligence, professional liability and adverse events
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Foreword
- Contents
- List of tables
- Preface
- Preface to the 1997 edition
- Acknowledgments
- About the authors
- Table of cases
- Table of statutes
- 1 Ethical principles for the medical profession
- 2 Ethical and legal responsibilities of medical students
- 3 Communication skills
- 4 Consent and informed decision making
- 5 Confidentiality, privacy and disclosure
- 6 Medical records, reports and certificates
- 7 Negligence, professional liability and adverse events
- 8 The regulation of the medical profession
- 9 Health care complaints systems
- 10 The doctor and sexual boundaries
- 11 Personal health of the doctor: illness and impairment
- 12 Maintenance of professional competence
- 13 Ethics and the allocation of health-care resources
- 14 The Australian health-care system
- 15 The doctor and interprofessional relationships
- 16 Entering and leaving practice and practice management
- 17 Clinical research
- 18 Prescribing and administering drugs
- 19 Diagnosing and certifying death and the role of the coroner
- 20 Births, reproductive technology, family law and child protection
- 21 Termination of pregnancy and related issues
- 22 Withholding or withdrawing treatment in the seriously or terminally ill
- 23 The law and the mentally ill
- 24 The law and courts of law in Australia
- 25 Medico-legal examinations and reports, court procedures and expert evidence
- 26 Other legislation relevant to medical practice
- APPENDIX 1 AMA CODE OF ETHICS – 2004
- Index
- References
Summary
The discomfit the medical profession has with the legal concept of negligence was succinctly expressed by Justice Michael Kirby in 1995 when he wrote:
Medical practitioners tend to see malpractice cases as involving a moral blight or stigma upon the practitioner concerned. From the point of view of the patient (and most lawyers) however, the issue is usually much more basic. It is whether a person who has suffered in some way as a result of medical or hospital procedures will be cast upon the genteel poverty of the social security system or be entitled to recover compensatory damages from the medical practitioner's insurance.
He went on to add:
To gain insurance the practitioner must pay premiums. These premiums become part of the costs of medical practice. In this way, all patients bear the cost of, and contribute to, the fund from which are paid damages when things go wrong.
Many have argued that the current system of the use of civil action by way of claims for negligence should be replaced by a no-fault compensation scheme [2–4] as exists in New Zealand and some Scandinavian countries. Others have pointed out how fraught is the concept of independent experts judging the cause of a poor or unexpected outcome after the event and have decried the gradual change in the notion of what represents negligent conduct [6–7]. These issues are not addressed in this chapter.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Good Medical PracticeProfessionalism, Ethics and Law, pp. 103 - 123Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
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