"Medicine is knowledge, judgment, experience and luck"

A pediatrician fails to order a CT scan on a child who fell down stairs. Somehow I don’t think that “luck” is a convincing argument in the courtroom.

Comments

Anonymous
But it is accurate. Since everything we do is based on an estimation of the odds, luck is indeed always at play. Courtrooms don’t practice medicine and when a doc gets to the point where everything he does is dictated by jury judgment rather than medical judgement–understandable when he has been sued a few times–then he has in fact become a psychological casualty and is occupationally impaired. If he cannot get past that and return to proper medical practice, then it is time to hang it up.