Medical Misdiagnosis: Criminal Implications
Physicians are placed in a position of great trust as experts. This is one of the many reasons that the issue incites such strong feelings in the public, regarding how the law penalizes and addresses issues pertaining to medical misdiagnosis. Many medical diseases are so-called great pretenders, especially in their early stages. For example, chest pains may be the result of anxiety or a heart attack. In the case of one 5-year-old girl with a severe stomach ache, a physician misdiagnosed the girl as having a viral stomach condition, only for the girl to die at home two days later of appendicitis (Doctor given warning, 2022). After examination by a medical tribunal, the physician in question was reprimanded for failing to take into consideration certain critical symptoms of the child, such as lethargy, or performing a second examination of her abdomen, but was allowed to practice, given that the incident was an aberration in the otherwise strong record of the physician (Doctor given warning, 2022).
In this case, the child in question was located in the United Kingdom, and if the case occurred in the U.S., it is likely the parents would have sued the physicians. According to Blacks Law Dictionary, negligence occurs when a professional has a duty of care and acts according to common prudence, given the knowledge the individual has at the time (Pandit & Pandit, 2009). For medical misdiagnosis to take place, therefore, a physician would have to be shown to have disregarded doing conventional examination and diagnostic procedures, leading to the patients death. However, this...
…error. A charge of murder, under the model penal code, however, requires intent, and the question of intentional harm is rarely a factor in cases of medical negligence or malpractice, but rather the extent to which the physician was using all of the capabilities in his or her possession to assist the patient.Regarding the question of whether being overworked and negligence is the same thing; clearly, being overly fatigued and subjected to more shifts can contribute to negligence, but it is also possible for negligence to occur due to distractions and other matters. Also, physicians should be able to engage in self-monitoring to know when to step away from a patient and admit to being too fatigued to continue. In some instances, hospital scheduling may be partially to blame, if it requires physicians to work…
References
Doctor given warning after Hampshire girl, 5, died after appendicitis misdiagnosed as stomach bug (22 July, 2022). Hampshire Live.
https://www.hampshirelive.news/news/hampshire-news/doctor-given-warning-after-hampshire-7355537
Pandit, M. S., & Pandit, S. (2009). Medical negligence: Coverage of the profession, duties,
ethics, case law, and enlightened defense - A legal perspective. Indian Journal of Urology IJU: Journal of the Urological Society of India, 25(3), 372–378. https://doi.org/10.4103/0970-1591.56206
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