The Secretary of the British Medical Association rejects the arguments advanced in two preceding articles in the same Journal issue, one by legal practitioners Diana and Malcolm Brahams and the other by law student Peter Ferguson, both of which favor legislation to govern decisions on the withholding of treatment from defective newborns. Havard criticizes the draft bill proposed by the Brahams...

In 1998 a lawyer working for the Dutch consumer organisation, Consumentenbond, suggested that hospitals, like hotels, should be classified according to the quality of service they provide. For the establishment of such a register it would of course be necessary to determine various parameters, including the incidence of complications occurring in each hospital. It did not take long before this ...

BACKGROUND Defensive medicine prompts physicians not to admit high-risk patients who need intensive care. This phenomenon not only decreases the quality of healthcare services, but also wastes scarce health resources. Defensive medicine occurs in negative and positive forms. Hence, the present study aimed to determine frequency of positive and negative defensive medicine behaviors and their und...

Therapeutic risk management of clinical-legal dilemmas achieves an optimal alignment between clinical competence and an understanding of legal concerns applicable to psychiatric practice. Understanding how psychiatry and law interact in frequently occurring clinical situations is essential for effective patient care. Successful management of clinical-legal dilemmas also avoids unnecessary, coun...

the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the most common basis on which malpractice lawsuits were lodged against physicians were allegations that the physicians did something wrong. 1,2 About three decades ago, physicians began to be sued for failing to do something right. 3 This was when defensive medicine came into being as a response to malpractice litigations and now it has become an undec...

Medical malpractice doctrine is one of the core issues in the current debate over healthcare reform in the United States. For decades now, it has been universally accepted that the threat or reality of formal litigation stemming from—or at least claiming—malpractice has been the single most important factor shaping the medico–legal arena. While conventional wisdom has it that patient safety is ...

BACKGROUND The term "Defensive" medicine was coined in the early 1970's and has been an important topic of scientific investigation and professional debate ever since. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to investigate the characteristics of defensive medicine, its reasons, and the extent to which it is practiced in the Turkish health care system. This is the first national survey to study th...