Criminalisation of fatal medical mistakes

After pleading guilty to the manslaughter of his patient by gross negligence Dr Feda Mulhem was given a custodial sentence of eight months. Mulhem, who was only three days into his first post as a specialist registrar in haematology at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, had instructed a junior doctor to inject an anticancer drug into the patient's spine. The drug should have been injected intravenously but Mulhem had confused this drug with another that is given at the same time, which is properly injected into the spine. Within a few minutes the doctor realised the magnitude of his mistake and was visibly shaken, but it was too late to save the life of his teenage patient, Wayne Jowett, whose cancer was in remission.^w1 Because Mulhem had already served time in custody awaiting his trial he was released immediately, and the dead patient's father called the eight month sentence “absolutely ridiculous,” for being too short.^w2

The anger of Wayne Jowett's father was understandable, but the use of the criminal justice system to punish Mulhem is questionable. He was not seeking to harm his patient; in fact he was intending to further his recovery. His “crime” was that he made a mistake; he confused a drug that is injected intravenously with a drug that is injected in the spine. When a doctor is using such a powerful and potentially dangerous drug, the professional obligation to get it right is naturally high. But even the most diligent, conscientious, and competent practitioner will make mistakes. Mulhem's mistake was the 23rd incident reported worldwide^w3 (and the 14th in 15 years in …