Medical Negligence & Medical Evidence

Medical negligence (also known as medical malpractice, medical errors, tort system) is an increasing public health concern among healthcare providers worldwide. The most comprehensive definition is "an act of omission or commission in planning or execution that contributes or could contribute to an unintended result". Medical negligence occurs when a healthcare professional selects the wrong method or procedure or improperly executes an appropriate method to treat or diagnose the patient. There is no clear definition of medical negligence due to lack of nomenclature, overlapping of definitions, and lack of a standardized method to measure it.

Negligence is the most commonly encountered act committed by most health professionals. Damage is death; or physical and/or pathological and/or psychiatric injury that a nurse's negligence has on the patient. Wrong diagnosis, wrong administration of drug and its quantity; mishandling of cases are the important aspects which cause danger to life of patients. Damage is caused by an adverse event-an injury caused by medical management that extends hospitalisation and/or disables someone at discharge or death. A likely sequence of events starts with a duty of care: leading to poor or absent standard of care, termed negligence; leading to an adverse event, culminating in damage. Damages are remuneratory awards given to the patient by court-decisions. Negligence attracts compensatory damages for economic or non-economic losses, and sometimes, special damages. For decades, common law governed negligence.

Criminality, where the state prosecutes an individual via the police and/or criminal courts, includes drug-misuse, and murder or attempted-murder of patients and staff. Monetary penalties for both include compensatory damages, and/or aggravated damages for mental-anguish, and/or exemplary damages for contumelious disregard of life.

Law entails precedent-based common law and parliamentary-legislation-based statutory law. India courts recognise and punish Medical Negligence as a Crime and so as well a Tort. The book comprehensively is written with an object to assist the legal fraternity as a commentary on medical negligence & medical evidence, issues involved, statutes, important cases, legal applications, and negligence committed by doctors during clinical practice; thus causing injury to the patients and their kith and kin.

Every endeavour is taken by the author to cover the international and Indian case laws, guidelines of investigation to be followed in case Medical Negligence, the 5 principles of negligence, Forums, Proving Negligence, Defenses and Remedies available as per law in Indian Judicial System and legal scenario.