When a physician gets sued, their effect strikes a physician to the core:
Those physicians who have not yet been sued may be surprised to learn what a web of conflicting emotions it elicits. One moment I felt shame and self-pity, while the next moment I felt sadness and sympathy for those who had sued me because something bad did happen, regardless of culpability. Moments later, the compassion turned to anger at those who sued me for betraying me and my best efforts.Oh, there was plenty of anger to go around. I was angry with the legal system for operating at a glacial pace while expecting physicians to make dozens of critical decisions without flaw during our brief, hurried encounters with patients.
Related posts:
- Expecting perfection in medicine
- Admit everybody! Chest pain in the ER leads to a successful malpractice lawsuit
- How malpractice suits affect physicians
- Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis’ malpractice lawsuit
- For doctors, a malpractice lawsuit is personal
- When you’re falsely accused in a shotgun lawsuit
- A frivolous lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice
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{ 22 comments }
sadly the legal system is now the new lottery. i practice in new york where record settlements are regularly granted, and of course with that comes the herd of 1800 lawyers.
doc R
And he is lucky. In my locality ER docs get sued on average once every two years. I have three open cases, with 1 from 2002 and one from 2003.
“You should have thought about all of this prior to med school.”
Yes, every med student should think of this. Let there be a shortage. Give the public what they deserve
Go into dentistry, be a PA, be a nurse. Being a doc is a lot of work and stress. Become a stock trader, or anything in business, sell real estate.
“Give the public what they deserve”
Great attitude there. This is what pisses me off about the malpractice issue — a minority of idiots abuse the legal system as you describe, and in turn you blame the entire patient population, adopt a “screw you” attitude, and figure you have the right to treat all of us like crap…which makes you no better than the “lottery players” as you describe them.
Hey, I’d happily back you on championing caps…but sure as hell not if you’re going to take this attitude. Get “what you deserve”, right?
And the patient – how are they doing?
You do remember the patients, right? The people who can’t work anymore and don’t go on making a couple hundred thousand a year? The people actually live with the devastating injury?
“Give the public what they deserve”
Unfortunately, while the majority of the public says they support controlling out of control lawsuits, they continue to elect politicians who clearly oppose fixing the mess, ie Democrats and Senator Arlen Spector (whose son is a hugely successful malpractice litigator).
I like many of my colleagues of my generation set out on a course to become a physician. In medical school we felt like a “protected class”. And that was the case prior to massive marketing, a generalized “dumbing down” of almost everything including medicine. A mass media marketing campaign by consumer interest groups, public agencies who supposedly have the mission to protect patients, have convinced many of the perception that physicians are ordinary people. Knowing what I and most physicians realize that is not the case at all. We have become afraid to complain and have become paralyzed at speaking this unpopular thought.It is politically uncorrect. This is not elitism, either. It is based upon fact and our unique responsibilities to and for patients.It gets more difficult as each year goes by. Pharmacies now want to practice medicine in retail clinics…it’s easy for them to do this…they have waivers, and can turf the really sick to physicians who unwillingly support this deviation for the good of the patient.
Being on the receiving end of actual malpractice tends to “strike you to the core” as well. Although the doctor here claims to have felt sympathy for his victim, most of his article is about his self-pity and how he was unable to cope with stress without being nasty to everyone around him. I hope he’ll never have to deal with having someone destroy his life through error or worse, deliberately, and then having that same person and his colleagues launch into a cover-up and slander campaign designed to discredit the victim. The fact is, it is incredibly difficult to bring and win a malpractice suit, and the ones that win tend to be rock solid legit.
i’m responsible for simply this comment:
sadly the legal system is now the new lottery. i practice in new york where record settlements are regularly granted, and of course with that comes the herd of 1-800 lawyers
…but while on the subject of overgeneralizing, obviously everthing is on a case to case basis. The problem is in the way the legal system works. My partner was brought into a suit because he wrote an order for a medication that was subsequently given incorrectly by a nurses error. Why then should he be named? Simply to add another sack of potential insurance money to any potential settlement. That is BS, plain and simple. An isolated case? No. Standard of legal practice.
I dont blame we physicians from becoming bitter over these issues. We get dragged into numerous legal battles where we get emotionally beaten, but where we have no ability to fight back…we have no ability to throw a legal punch. Thats why ideas like ‘loser pays all’ become very alluring because at least there is some risk to starting frivolous suits.
After all the years of training, with the current reinbursement systems, after factoring in the emotional toil of dealing with life and death matters on a daily basis…this is why there are so many bitter docs.
And by the way, things were not this bad when i was accepted into med school in 1989.
— DOC R — NY —
“My partner was brought into a suit because he wrote an order for a medication that was subsequently given incorrectly by a nurses error. Why then should he be named? Simply to add another sack of potential insurance money to any potential settlement. That is BS, plain and simple. An isolated case? No. Standard of legal practice.”
Why is he named? Because at the start of the suit it’s difficult to tell what exactly happened, and as the doctor he is effectively “captain of the ship.” Would he have submitted to discovery without being named?
“Thats why ideas like ‘loser pays all’ become very alluring because at least there is some risk to starting frivolous suits.”
We already have loser pays, even in NY.
Re: “The fact is, it is incredibly difficult to bring and win a malpractice suit, and the ones that win tend to be rock solid legit.”
You are presenting your opinion as fact, dangerous ground for a statement. Do you have any basis for your contention? Do you know how easy it is to file a lawsuit? And given a sympathetic plaintiff, do you realize how likely it is that justice may not be done?
You present yourself as one who has suffered malpractice. Are you familiar with the ” A reasonable and prudent member of the profession” standard? Are you a member of the profession, and if not, what qualifies you to define malpractice?
“I hope he’ll never have to deal with having someone destroy his life through error or worse, deliberately…”
And bad malpractice suits are never brought, and doctors never commit suicide as a result. You disregard the pain of a wrongful lawsuit as trivial. How nice for you to feel sorry for yourself, and have no feeling for the suffering of another. Yes, pain hurts, but you don’t care about anyone’s pain but your own.
” Do you know how easy it is to file a lawsuit? And given a sympathetic plaintiff, do you realize how likely it is that justice may not be done?”
To file a med mal lawsuit, if certificate of merit is required, it’s at least a couple thousand. Most lawyers will spend $5K before they even file on consulting experts. And given that physicians win 2/3 of the time, there must not be many sympathetic plaintiffs.
” Yes, pain hurts, but you don’t care about anyone’s pain but your own.”
Let’s not compare the pain of being the victim of malpractice with a lifelong injury and your pain and suffering capped at $250,000 to the “emotional scarring” a physician who still will earn that in 18 mos on average.
You guys never ever stop whining about this. You couldn’t care less about the patients you are screwing up. That means nothing at all to you so why do you act as though you do care about the harm you have caused them? You are the “Me” people. All you care about is yourself. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of malpractice is never punished. We either believe you made a mistake and mistakenly think you might just be sorry and have learned from your mistake. or we are just to devastated to even pursue a malpractice case. now if you were all in a court room every single time you actually did commit malpractice, then you may have something to complain about. But this is no new information for you. You absolutely know it is fact.
I am a neurosurgeon who took early retirement. Now I’m planning on going to law school while I am still (relatively) young. Given the way I was generally treated thoughout my training and by members of the profession over the years, I will harbor no guilt taking the other side.
I know that most docs would happily do the same to me if the situation were reversed.
Agk! There is no stone unturned when it comes to the “pain” of the providers. Yet, one never sees “the pain of a personal injury lawsuit” where some “treating provider” whores him/herself out on some BS “patient told me they were hurt in the accident so it must be true because the patient is infinitely reliable unless it is a med mal claim” clinical causation logical fallacy. Providers as a whole should be the last group whining about lawsuits. Not a single PI, WC or toxic tort case can be filed without some provider prostituting themselves for the plaintiffs’ bar.
~Criminallopath~
“now if you were all in a court room every single time you actually did commit malpractice, then you may have something to complain about. But this is no new information for you. You absolutely know it is fact.”
The large majority of malpractice cases are found for the doctor so in short the doctor is in court the majority of the time when he/she DIDN’T commit malpractice. How is you statement a “fact” when you have given absolutely no evidence to support it.
Actually, the large majority of malpractice cases that go to TRIAL are found for the doctor. Get your facts straight.
“You are presenting your opinion as fact, dangerous ground for a statement. Do you have any basis for your contention? Do you know how easy it is to file a lawsuit? And given a sympathetic plaintiff, do you realize how likely it is that justice may not be done?”
I don’t see much coming from your direction but opinion, either. But it is certainly not easy to file a malpractice claim, as most lawyers will only accept rock solid cases that have a strong chance of winning. The very fact that it is so difficult to win is why they stick to iron-clad cases.
http://ezinearticles.com/?10-Misconceptions-About-New-York-Medical-Malpractice-Lawyers&id=471547
“Filing a medical malpractice lawsuit in New York is downright difficult. A lawyer must first conduct a thorough investigation of the facts and then have all the medical records reviewed by a medical expert. Only after the expert has confirmed evidence of wrongdoing; that the wrongdoing caused injury; and that the injury is significant, can the attorney go forward and file suit.”
“You present yourself as one who has suffered malpractice. Are you familiar with the ” A reasonable and prudent member of the profession” standard? Are you a member of the profession, and if not, what qualifies you to define malpractice?”
What qualifies you to define malpractice? Are you a lawyer, familiar with the laws in every state? Apparently not, if you think it is easy to file a malpractice claim.
“And bad malpractice suits are never brought, and doctors never commit suicide as a result. You disregard the pain of a wrongful lawsuit as trivial. How nice for you to feel sorry for yourself, and have no feeling for the suffering of another. Yes, pain hurts, but you don’t care about anyone’s pain but your own.”
No one ever said that bad malpractice suits don’t occur. But considering that doctor groups and tort reform advocates behave as if every malpractice case is illegitimate, it’s rather hard to take any doctor’s claims of “frivolous lawsuits” seriously. Blame your own lack of willingness to acknowledge reality for that one, and not any alleged indifference to suffering on my part. Nor did anyone say that getting falsely accused of something is trivial. But compared to a lifetime of pain, suffering, inability to earn a living, etc that can occur in many cases of severe malpractice, merely being sued is a walk in the park, especially after you get to come home to your nice cushy income after it’s all over. As a chronic pain patient, I am on trial 24/7 as a potential drug seeker, drug dealer and malingerer who can be sentenced to torture at a moment’s notice anytime some guy in a white coat gives the word, so don’t lecture me about the “pain” of false accusations. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of them.
Why would a retired neurosurgeon ever want to go to Law School?
Until you correct this you have no leg to stand on.
Half of U.S. doctors mum about incompetence: survey
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science EditorMon Dec 3, 2:07 PM ET
Nearly half of all U.S. doctors fail to report incompetent or unethical colleagues, even though they agree that such mistakes should be reported, researchers said on Monday.
They found that 46 percent of physicians surveyed admitted they knew of a serious medical error that had been made but did not tell authorities about it.
“There is a measurable disconnect between what physicians say they think is the right thing to do and what they actually do,” said Eric Campbell of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, who led the survey.
Doctors are also surprisingly willing to order unnecessary — and often expensive — tests such as magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans. Just 25 percent said they were looking out to ensure they did not unintentionally treat someone differently because of their sex or race, the survey found.
In 2000, the U.S. Institute of Medicine reported that up to 98,000 people die every year because of medical errors in hospitals alone.
Campbell and colleagues surveyed more than 1,600 physicians in 2003 and 2004 for their report, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Up to 96 percent of those surveyed said they should report all instances of significant incompetence or medical errors to the hospital clinic or to authorities. The exception was among cardiologists and surgeons, with just about 45 percent agreeing.
And 85 percent of most doctors said they should tell patients or relatives about significant errors.
But this did not translate into practice.
Forty percent of the doctors said they knew of a serious medical error in their hospital group or practice but 31 percent admitted they had done nothing about it at least once.
Doctors also did not always practice what they preached ethically. While 93 percent of doctors said they should provide care regardless of a patient’s ability to pay, only 69 percent actually accepted uninsured patients who cannot pay.
LETTING COMPETENCE SLIDE
While most of the doctors agreed they needed to keep up with changes in the profession and have their competence reviewed, only 31 percent had undergone a competency review in the past three years.
Dr. James Thompson, chief executive officer of the Federation of State Medical Boards, said one problem may be that doctors know there is not much that can be done to help doctors who are struggling to be competent.
“There are very few places where they can send them for remediation,” Thompson told a news conference.
And medical boards may not have the resources to punish errant doctors.
“There are restrictions on state medical boards that inhibit their ability to go after physicians aggressively,” Thompson said.
“There are state medical boards that don’t even have their own teams of investigators,” he added. “There are state medical boards that are, quite frankly, underfunded and understaffed.”
But he said medical boards cannot act unless someone reports a problem doctor.
“State medical boards only react to complaints — they are not a policing agency,” Thompson said.
(Editing by Will Dunham and John O’Callaghan)
http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2007/12/03/eline/links/20071203elin023.html
In addition, there are statutes of limitations on complaints even outside of court. The problem is that you can earnestly try to resolve an issue fairly and openly with a hospital/clinc, but they will mire you in bureaucracy and denials. Meanwhile the clock is ticking away — and you may lose your chance to file the complaint with an external regulatory agency.
If hospitals/clinics would respond to patient complaints more quickly and honestly, that might reduce malpractice suits. If regulatory agencies would extend statutes of limitations so that if patients got nowhere with their doctors, they still had somewhere to turn, that might reduce malpractice suits. As it is, if a patient actually wants action to be taken, turning to a malpractice attorney ASAP is about the only option available. No, it’s not right, but give them some alternatives…
“Pharmacies now want to practice medicine in retail clinics”.
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RNs employed by the Pharmacies will treat minor medical problems.
Pharmacists will not be treating patients.
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