Negligence of medical experts: Issues in writing medicolegal reports must be considered

doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7498.1027-b

BMJ 2005;330:1027 (30 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7498.1027-b

Letter

Negligence of medical experts

Issues in writing medicolegal reports must be considered

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The points raised by Bishop in his personal viewon the negligence of medical experts are important and oftenignored by doctors until they directly affect them.¹ Medicolegalreports usually deal with what turns into a sentinel event ina doctor's practising life. Reports need to be fair to patientsbut also to doctors.

Consideration needs to be given to issues of report writing.

Firstly, reports should be written by those in similar currentclinical practice for a minimum of eight to 10 years.

Secondly, some training in the legal aspects and in the interpretationof data is needed.

The person writing the report must be careful not to use toomuch retrospective analysis. Events need to be considered withthe level of knowledge available to the doctor at the time ofthe event
An understanding of data and literature interpretationis important²
Medical and legal communication is . . . [Full text of this article]