Patient safety instead of adversarial medicolegal claims
| dc.contributor.author | Murphy, J F A | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2013-09-24T09:01:28Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2013-09-24T09:01:28Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2013-09 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10147/302178 | |
| dc.description | In the UK the annual cost of claims has risen to 1.5 bn annually. Similar increases have been encountered in Ireland. Clare Dyer1, an experienced legal correspondent, questions the value and effectiveness of the current tort systems. It doesnâ t appear to be making the patient safer. The present arrangement is expensive both in time and money. The court costs are substantial and sizable portion of any award goes to legal team rather than to the patient. Large amounts of money are being lost to the health service annually. The process is very challenging for doctors. The majority undergo periods of emotional distress during the lengthy, intrusive litigation process. One of the possible reasons that doctors react so adversely to litigation is that most of them are self-critical from the outset. Their distress is compounded by the fact that in tort law fault must be found in order for compensation to be paid. A feeling of being out of control pervades the experience2. In the US being sued is now considered the price of practising medicine. The stakes are both personal and very high. By age 65 years 75% of doctors in low risk and 99% in high specialties will have encountered personal litigation3. The term medical malpractice stress syndrome (MMSS) is increasingly being used to describe the commonly experienced array of psychological and physical symptoms including anxiety, depression, negative self-image, poor appetite and exacerbation of pre-existing medical problems. Downstream consequences include stopping seeing certain types of high risk patients, taking early retirement, discouraging others from entering medicine. | en_GB |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.publisher | Irish Medical Journal | en_GB |
| dc.relation.url | http://www.imj.ie/ | en_GB |
| dc.subject | PATIENT SAFETY | en_GB |
| dc.subject.other | STATE CLAIMS | en_GB |
| dc.title | Patient safety instead of adversarial medicolegal claims | en_GB |
| dc.type | Article | en |
| refterms.dateFOA | 2018-08-23T07:50:58Z |
