I know I blathered on waaaay to long in my previous post, but I just had to come back and report that the minute I was finished with my "can't we all get along" screed I was handed a new case file REPRESENTING 4 DOCTORS SUING THEIR FORMER EMPLOYER!! Karma? Synchronicity? I just thought it was hillarious. (And I'll get that bastard employer and vindicate those doctors, I promise!)

First, I think your perspective on this issues is a respected one as should be those of us who beg to differ with some or all of your opinions. But I'd ask you to consider for one minute that your "high" risk pregnancy resulted in a child born with cerebal palsy, a condition that can sometimes be attributed to doctor malpractice.

My question to you is would you so eloquently stand behind the tenets of your post then?

Directed at NO ONE in particular, this entire debate reminds me of women who become anti-abortion AFTER having one or folks who don't support the death penality unitl someone close to them is brutally murdered. It's just so funny how "Life" has a way of snatching those "rose colored, judgemental glasses" right from our faces.

The way I see it 3 things will HAVE ot occur:

1) First, Doctors will have to "police" themselves and git rid of the "bad" apples.

2) Lawyers will have to stop expecting perfection in the practice of medicine. I've experienced my share of physician mistakes and I believe that ANY practioner of ANY profession NEVER making one is an impossibility.

3) Patients will have to be their own best advocates in their treatment and not be to quick to "rush to sue" when the medical outcome is not what we would have expected or wanted.

One final comment and then I'm done (for now ) is that has any asked the qurestion WHY people in general have such negative opinions of attorneys? Here's an excerpt from an very interesting article:

The vast majority of commentators generally agree that the level of "professionalism" displayed by attorneys has declined dramatically in the last twenty-five years.15 They point to the following as evidence: (1) a decline in civility and courteous conduct between lawyers, an increase in unethical or uncivil behavior among lawyers and judges, frequent lapses of appropriate ethical and professional conduct, and increasingly aggressive, competitive, and money-oriented legal battles, fought with a "win at all costs" approach;16 (2) increased competition and pressure to win-and the underlying theory that law has become a "business" rather than a profession, placing a heightened emphasis on materialism and money;17 (3) a decline in attorney and client loyalty to the law firm;18 (4) frequent and abrupt dissolutions and reconstitutions of large law firms;19 (5) an increase in aggressive lawyer advertising;20 and (6) a perceived general decline in lawyers' values, ideals, and morals.21

http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/lawrev/46/daic.html

What's also interesting to note is that public opinion about physicians has remained largely unchanged and is still quite positive. IMHO, sometimes the best way to effect change is to start with "the man in the mirror".

WOW Path-Ironically some of those same factors you list for disenfranchisement on the part of lawyers exsists in medicine now!! Advertising for different providers and pharmaceuticals, dissolution and buy-out of large physician practices. Lack of civilty between some specialties or at best a tolerance. Reccommending unnecessary of excessive procedures to up the income flow in procedure heavy practices. :twocents:

But I completely agree the bad apples have to go-40% of judgements and cases are brought against 4% of the physcians who are "repeat offenders". What's up with that? I'm with you totally that I've been on the recieving end of neglectful malpratice many many years back but was my own best champion and got the problem resolved through mediation and transfer to another doctor in the same practice. I don't expect my doctors (14 specialists after this last stay in the hosp) to be perfect :crossfingers: , just accountable to me as the consumer

I think that suggesting or ordering a lot of procedures is what we call now "the shotgun approach" in medicine. Meaning, let us order every test known to man because God forbid something goes wrong and the patient comes back to sue the pants/skirt off of me because I did not order X or Y test that more than likely will not do any good...but give you a warm fuzzy albeit costing $$$$. This is what medicine has come to and it is sad to say that we have to watch our backs like this. Because not matter how good your intentions NOBODY is perfect and yes, mistakes do happen but in many cases things just go wrong because they do without anyone being at fault. People now just expect perfection and when something happens they blame the nearest person...

I'm a little out of touch with the malpractice situation in the states since I'm living in Europe right now, but I was wondering how many cases are those where the patient's insurance didn't cover their medical care and the patient was sueing for this reason. Does this happen?

A few years ago I had a friend who was diagnosed with cancer, but it took some time after he started feeling ill before the doctors were able to identify the cancer. He had changed jobs (and therefore insurance) during this interval and his current insurance wouldn't pay for the treatment claiming it was a pre-existing condition. At the time he (maybe jokingly) said his only way to pay for the treatment would be to sue his doctors for not making the diagnosis earlier. He didn't sue in the end and ended up with a huge debt to pay off. But this case made me wonder if this happens sometimes.

I think that this may happen but again why sue the physicians? just because malignancies are not found right away does not mean that this was (although it may be the docs fault some times) the fault of anyone. Here lies the problem IMHO, something goes wrong and your insurance does not cover X or Y, or you are diagnosed with cancer after numerous attempts to diagnose and illness, and for some reason the physician gets blamed. Sometimes diseases are just difficult to diagnose specially if there are other comorbidities...yet we always expect perfection in all areas of medicine from diagnosing to treatment. I wish that the public would realize that medicine is not and will never be a "perfect" science with answers for everything. We are dealing with the human body which is fascinating yet very challenging...I hope that your friend is doing better.

path, i think you aren't acknowledging the difference between legitimate malpractice suits and frivilous ones. if her child had been born with cerebral palsy, and there was good evidence that it was the doctor's fault, that would be a legitimate reason for filing a malpractice suit. that wouldn't make her an litigation-happy monster. there are shades of grey here, and a system for malpractice litigation is important for protecting people against harm caused by their doctors' negligence or mistakes. of course no one is perfect and everyone makes mistakes, but when mistakes happen, i don't think the patient should have to just shut up and deal with it. it's important that they have some recourse. i absolutely agree that the current malpractice situation is bad and needs to be reformed, but i also think it's important to realize that malpractice legislation is not a bad thing in principle.

The difference between "frivilous" lawsuits and a "legitamte" lawsuits based on how the current legal system is run appears to be "in the eye of the beholder" and determined by:

1) How many "high priced" lawyers each side has

2) How many high priced "experts" each side has.

Allow me to change course here a little bit, I think anyone who had even a little knowledge of the OJ case could clearly see that the evidence was stacked up against him yet he walked free. Anyone with even a little commom sense can agree that he walked primarily because he had a trillion dollar legal team. No public defandant in the universe could have gotten him cleared of those charges. What's the point?? The point is that the determination of what is "legitamte" is about as varied as anal sphincters.

I think you've contradicted yourself here a bit. First you say no one is perfect yet you feel patients should ALWAYS have legal recourse when a mistakes happens. Where do you draw the line?? Maybe the reason why the doctor cut the wrong leg off was because the technician put the wrong name tag on the patient. Perhaps the chemo would have worked on the patient better had the patient stopped smoking like the doctor suggested. But no one ever sues the technician and I think it's obvious why. Like someone posted earlier, 96% of doctors shouldn't pay for the mistakes of the rest.