The purpose of laws is to control and standardize human actions for the overall good of society. Laws typically aim at deterring the incidence of harm to other people while simultaneously protecting the liberties of individuals. Law teaches that health care professionals owe a duty of care to their patients, and, if they breach that duty such that people are either injured or die as a result of such a breach, the health care professionals will have to pay a penalty. These penalties include, among others, loss of license, incarceration and financial loss (Cameron & Gumbel, 2010). Various types of law directly affect different professions and professionals. This paper will examine the type of law, which directly affects health care professionals, providing an analysis of how ethical decisions and how they work cooperatively.
Negligence is perhaps the most impactful law on health care professionals. Negligence is essentially a personal or civil wrong, otherwise considered as a tort. In the medical profession, negligence is the unintentional omission or commission of certain acts, which a reasonable and cautious individual would or would not execute in certain situations. Health care professionals perform acts of commission by dispensing improper medication, wrong medicine dosages or administering the wrong medication to a wrong patient (Simpson, 2010). Negligence law also deters health care professionals from performing procedures such as surgery without the consent of the patient, surgically amputating the wrong part of the body or performing such procedures on wrong patients. On the other hand, negligence law deters health care professionals from acts of omission such as failing to dispense medicines, order diagnostic tests or not following up on atypical test results. However, among health care professionals such negligence is referred to as malpractice, which is the carelessness of negligence exercised by professionals. The law provides for different categories of negligence, for instance, criminal negligence, which is the irresponsible indifference for patients’ wellbeing and safety.
The law on negligence provides for four distinctive elements to prove malpractice on the part of health care professionals. Firstly, duty to care means that there exists a legal relationship between health care professionals and their patients. Health care professionals typically owe legal obligation of performance, care and observance to their patients. This factor directly affects health care professionals sued for malpractice since patients can prove the existence of a physician-patient relationship at the time of injury (Jena, Seabury, Lakdawalla & Chandra, 2011). Duty is also established by contract between health care professionals and their patients. Duty to care is critical to health care professionals who owe prescribed standards of care to their patients. Duty to care includes, among others, the provision of timely health care and employing qualified and competent medical staff. A duty of care affirms that health care professionals are not only responsible for offering care, but also offering it through an acceptable way, thereby meeting pre-established standards of care. Negligence occurs when health care professionals fail to adhere to prescribed standards of care. In this regard, ethics and law work cooperatively since several medical standards of care are subjective to medical ethics. One of the most pertinent areas in which ethics and law work collaboratively is with regard to the termination of revival efforts. In such instances, health care professionals need to offer expert testimonies regarding the termination of resuscitation.
In addition to duty to care, health care professionals find themselves subjected to malpractice actions in case they breach their duties. Breach of duty occurs when health care professionals fail to comply with pre-established and accepted standards of care. The law also allows patients to sue health care professionals for malpractice when the professionals fail to provide prescribed standards of care (Simpson, 2010). The law binds health care professionals to execute their duties according to the legal standards of care, which include refraining from performing various acts. Another critical provision of the negligence law that makes the law highly impactful on health care professionals is the provision of injury and actual damages. This element makes of malpractice in negligence tort impactful on health care professionals since it affirms the consequences of a health care professional’s negligent actions. Medical malpractice results in the incidence of injury. Health care professionals may be negligent, but still be in a position to deter liability, particularly in the event that the patient does not experience any actual damages or injuries. This is element is the third factor needed to prove malpractice in health care professionals. The law provides that patients can sue their health care professionals for malpractice when they experience injury or damage as a consequence of negligence on the part of health care professionals. However, such injury does not necessarily need to be physical in nature; injury also includes, among other things, loss of reputation or income and compensating patients for pain and suffering experienced.
However, the law protects health care professionals from frivolous law suits on malpractice by requiring plaintiffs to prove either injury or harm; otherwise the health care professional under suit is not considered liable. Notably, the law borrows from ethical standards by providing that the sheer incidence of injury or harm is not sufficient to prove malpractice or negligence for which tort law presumes liability. This is because it is quite possible for injury to take place as a consequence of unavoidable circumstances or acts of God (Pozgar, 2012). Therefore, since it is highly unethical to blame a health care professionals for acts that are beyond their control, for instance, if an earthquake causes harm during a surgical operation, it would be unethical to blame such professionals for this incidence. The last element of malpractice or negligence is proximate cause or causation. This is the last element used to determine the occurrence of malpractice among health care professionals. This element necessitates the existence of a close, reasonable and casual relationship between the professional’s negligent action and the ensuing damages experienced by patients.
In essence, the law impacts health care professionals by providing that their purported negligence must be a significant factor in causing the injury. Proximate cause is significant in highlighting the link between a health care professional’s breached duty and the ensuing injury. In essence, the breach of duty should be the proximate cause of the ensuing injury when determining the occurrence of negligence or malpractice (Dickson & Griffiths, 2009). Notably, in order to prove medical malpractice, plaintiffs must show that the health care professional owed them duty; essentially a legal duty, which exists when a health care professional undertakes to treat a patient. It should also be proven that the duty was breached through failure to adhere to pertinent standards of care. Additionally, the breach must also be shown to cause injury and damage.
References
Cameron, C., & Gumbel, E. A. (2010). Clinical negligence: A practitioner's handbook. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dickson , R. H., & Griffiths, J, R. (2009). Medical and dental negligence. Brixton: Bloomsbury Professional.
Jena, A. B., Seabury, S., Lakdawalla, D., & Chandra, A. (2011). Malpractice risk according to physician specialty. New England Journal of Medicine, 365(7), 629-36.
Pozgar, G. D. (2012). Legal and ethical issues for health professionals (3rd ed.). Maine: Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Simpson, M. (2010). Professional negligence and liability (2nd ed.). New York: LLP Professional Publishing.
