Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog

This linked article is very long, and the attorney trots out every tired argument in the book about how doctors do not care and cover each other's tracks.

It is very true that physicians make mistakes. Maybe a lot of them. But this is not because doctors do not care, it is because medicine is very difficult. There is a very good reason in the saying, "this isn't brain surgery, " that "brain surgery" is synonymous with extremely difficult. I know of few other fields where there are so many details to be attended to, and missing even one can mean death.

I do not think doctors want patients who are harmed by medicine to be ignored. But sometimes doctors make mistakes, honest mistakes, and all intentions are good, and the doctor is humilited anyway. Most doctors would own up to their mistakes if there was a way to do so without being humiliated in court.

The essential problem is this: Law is an adversarial system. Medicine is not. So when you mix law and medicine you get distrust, anger, and betrayal, which is the worst thing you can do to a doctor-patient relationship.

There has to be a way to handle errors that does not involve lawyers and courts.

That is the part trial lawyers will never get. Med-mal reform should not be about letting doctors get away with their errors. It should be about errors being rectified without lawyers.
 

I think as physicians we have to accept a simple fact, one we say in private to each other all the time, one that is borne out in this article. Lawyers are the ENEMY. They are the bane of our existence. If we sit in forums and debate with them the goods and bads of the system, we are playing on their turf, and we can't win. The playing field is not level. We need to have a Political Action committee where we pay for our own dirty politicians to change the rules. That's what they do. If we don't act with militance, we will never get rid of this scourge and our patients suffer.