Letters
Professional negligence
Negligence cannot be decided by offending doctorEDITOR,--As a doctor with some experience as an expert witness in writing reports on medicolegal cases I agree with the general thrust of the editorial by Jean Ritchie and Sally Davies: that doctors should be candid to patients and carers about the progress or otherwise of their patients.1 However, the article continually mentioned the desirability of doctors disclosing to patients if they have been "negligent." That is wrong. Whether a doctor has or has not been negligent can only be decided by others (a court of law, the General Medical Council, an inquiry, etc).
As expert witnesses writing reports we conform to careful practice in coming to an opinion as to whether or not practitioners in the case under review were negligent or not. In coming to this opinion we have in mind various legal guidelines framed in famous judgments such as Bolam
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- Professional negligence: a duty of candid disclosure?
- Jean H Ritchie and Sally C Davies
BMJ 1995 310: 888-889.[Extract] [Full Text]
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