Professional Negligence: Some Further Limiting Factors

Professional Negligence

Dangerous delusions? Misidentification syndromes and professional negligence.

A number of case histories have reported an association between the presence of misidentification syndromes and violent behavior. If patients with such delusions are truly more likely to perpetrate violent acts, treating mental health professionals could potentially be considered liable for not warning or protecting potential victims. However, the purported association between violence and misi...

Some limiting factors in meta-analysis.

In first explicating the notion of quantitative literature review for the social sciences, Glass (1976) argued that knowledge is not built from any individual study, but from the integration of findings from many studies. Individual studies do not so much yield knowledge as evidence with which knowledge can be built. Knowledge is socially constructed. To overemphasize a single study’s findings ...

Professional ethics: further comments.

Downie continues the debate over professional ethics in general, and medical ethics in particular, begun by P. Sieghart (Journal of Medical Ethics 1985 Sep; 11(3): 117-122), and furthered by Downie and Sieghart (JME 1986 Jun; 12(2): 64-66) and R. Gillon (JME 1986 Jun; 12(2): 59-60). Here Downie addresses Gillon's theses that a physician has a special obligation to his patients, that this oblig...

Professional Negligence, Paralegals and Modern Legal Ethics between the Bookends

Over the past few months three books have come to the office which deserve some attention from the legal profession. Each is unique in its own way and serves a useful purpose. The first of the three is Professional Negligence1 by Australian National University law professor David F. Partlett. The book deals fundamentally with tort liability of professionals, mainly, M.Ds. and lawyers, but inclu...