How Do I Become a Medical Malpractice Attorney?

Medical disputes refer to disputes that occur in medical enterprises, legal entities or institutions with legal qualifications, such as health care, preventive health care, and medical cosmetology. At present, medical disputes in China are particularly difficult to handle.

Medical Dispute

Medical disputes refer to medical enterprises and institutions with legal qualifications such as health care, preventive health care, and medical cosmetology.

Medical disputes are usually caused by medical errors and negligence.

Liability for tort and breach of contract

If a medical dispute arises between the doctor and the patient, they can choose the liability for tort or breach of contract and ask the other party to take responsibility.

The "State Council" issued on September 1, 2002

Medical fault, ^[3]

Medical

State Council Premier Li Keqiang signed a State Council Order promulgating the Regulations on the Prevention and Handling of Medical Disputes, which will be implemented as of October 1, 2018.

The Party Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to the prevention and handling of medical disputes. In order to fully integrate the prevention and handling of medical disputes into the track of the rule of law, protect the legitimate rights and interests of both doctors and patients, maintain medical order, and ensure medical safety, the State Council has formulated these regulations to promote the legal prevention and proper handling of medical disputes at the institutional level and strive to build harmony The doctor-patient relationship promotes the sustained and healthy development of China's medical and health undertakings.

The "Regulations" clearly propose that the development of diagnosis and treatment activities should be patient-centered, strengthen humane care, strictly abide by relevant laws and regulations, and abide by professional ethics. By strengthening daily management of medical quality and safety, strengthening risk prevention and control in key links and areas of medical services, highlighting the importance of communication between doctors and patients in medical services, and preventing medical disputes from the source.

The Regulations clarify the principles, approaches and procedures for handling medical disputes, with emphasis on giving play to the role of people's mediation in resolving medical disputes, and uniformly regulating medical damage assessment activities before litigation in terms of identification standards, procedures and expert pool .

The Regulations set strict legal responsibilities for violations of medical quality and safety management requirements, issuing false appraisal conclusions and autopsy reports, and fabricating and disseminating false medical dispute information. ^[1]

Misunderstanding 1: Medical disputes are equal to medical accidents

Medical malpractice refers to the negligence of medical personnel in the diagnosis and treatment of medical personnel, which directly causes the death of patients,

"Medical Disputes" is characterized by: First, it emphasizes practicality, introduces some knowledge that is closely related to the people's life, and makes it as practical as possible. Second, focus on examples and use a large number of cases to explain the problem for your reference. Life examples are all in line with actual needs. Analytical solutions are essentially serving the parties. Under such a concept, theoretical discussions should give way to providing parties with simple and easy-to-understand step suggestions and practical action plans. This requires that

Foreword

Chapter I Medical Disputes and

The number is increasing year by year: there are many medical complaints, more medical technology appraisal, more disability appraisal, and more media participation;

Increase in the number of unsuccessful complaints in hospitals: The "Inversion of Burden of Proof" adopted by the new "Regulations on the Treatment of Medical Accidents" has increased the number of cases where hospitals cannot provide evidence;

Increase in the amount of compensation: The final result of a medical dispute is often a request for financial compensation to the hospital. As long as there are disadvantages to the hospital, especially when there is no evidence, patients and family members will make a loud noise and demand compensation, the more the amount The better

Increasing processing difficulties: Most medical accidents and medical disputes have complex causes, the relevant laws and regulations are not yet complete, and people from all walks of life generally think that patients are vulnerable groups and should be given special protection, so it is very difficult to handle them;

Increased social impact: In particular, some medical accidents and medical disputes cannot be met due to high claims from patients, and they have repeatedly complained to the health administrative department, judicial department and relevant media. In addition, some media lack medical knowledge, do not know the truth, and blindly speculate. , Cause great damage to the hospital's reputation.

Precautionary measures

How to prevent the occurrence of medical accidents and medical disputes is the most concerned issue for the national health community and various medical and health industries. Medical institutions and experts and scholars at all levels have also conducted the most research and attempts on this issue, mainly in the following aspects.

Strengthen the construction of medical ethics and morals and establish a good image

Educating medical ethics and medical ethics for medical personnel and establishing good professional ethics are vital to prevent medical disputes. Many departments are co-managing, treating both the symptoms and the symptoms, praising advanced models, rigorously investigating and disciplinary violations, and striving to do everything for the patients, serve the patients, and make the patients convenient. Continuously improve medical quality and reduce medical accidents and disputes with practical actions.

Enhance medical technology for medical staff

Medical staff should keep up with the times to strengthen medical technology, strengthen three basic training, and learn advanced medical technology, because the newly implemented tort liability law has determined the standard for judging whether there is any fault in the medical side as the current level of medical technology, so it keeps up with the times It is very important to master advanced medical technology. In a case of misdiagnosis of pediatric osteosarcoma represented by lawyer Song Lihong, it was because the doctor did not master the operation of the pathological biopsy of osteosarcoma, which led to misdiagnosis, and finally compensated the patient for more than 200,000 yuan.

Strengthen medical records management

The medical record is the original record of each link in the medical process. The problems reflected in the medical record are often problems in the medical link. It plays a vital role in the treatment of medical disputes (especially since the implementation of inversion of evidence). The medical record is an important basis for determining whether the medical party is at fault. If there is no medical record, the court will consider that the medical party cannot prove that it cannot, so that the medical party assumes full responsibility. China's current "Regulations on the Management of Medical Records of Medical Institutions " stipulates that the retention time of outpatient (emergency) medical record files should be no less than 15 years from the date of the patient's last consultation. The "Inpatient Work System" stipulates that in-patient medical records should in principle be kept permanently. Lawyer Song Lihong has represented a medical dispute because the hospital did not keep medical records, which resulted in the hospital being sentenced to pay more than 600,000 yuan. According to the situation of the patient at that time, the responsibility of the hospital was slight, but without the medical record, the hospital could not prove that it was not at fault. Therefore, the hospital was judged to assume 80% of the responsibility. Medical institutions must attach importance to the management of medical records, and must truly do: strengthen the legal education of medical records and improve the sense of responsibility; strengthen the management of various systems and implement the writing of medical documents (patient records, medical records and auxiliary examination reports), especially Electronic medical record writing must be more rigorous; strict medical record management system, arbitrary lending, alteration and loss are strictly prohibited.

Establish and improve various rules and regulations, and standardize various operating procedures

At present, hospitals have formulated and perfected practical measures and established various rules and regulations: the responsibilities of various types of medical staff at all levels, the work system and the practice of diagnosis and treatment of injuries, such as the third-level physician rounds system, the first consultation responsibility system, and the Pre- and post-operative discussion system, critically ill and dead patients discussion system, medical record writing system, transfer system, medical equipment management system, prescription management system, "three investigations and seven pairs" system, hospital infection management system, consultation system, preoperative and Patients or their families talking system. Medical regulations should be strictly implemented. In a medical dispute case represented by lawyer Song Lihong, because the doctor did not use the microscope to perform the operation according to the medical operation specifications, the patient suffered paraplegia after the operation, which caused great harm to the patient.

Improve service style and improve medical quality

The hospital has made every effort to strengthen the concept of timely service, response service, prudent service, non-specific service and honest service of medical staff, strengthen medical moral education and professional quality education of medical staff, and establish the idea of serving the people wholeheartedly. Attitudes, further improve the efficiency, rigorousness, scientificity, comprehensiveness and purity of medical staff, practically improve the level of medical technology, and reduce the occurrence of medical disputes.

In this regard, the "ten points" are summarized: the medical technology is more sophisticated, the service attitude is more enthusiastic, the inquiry is more detailed, the examination is more comprehensive, the auxiliary examination is more complete, the disease history is more accurate, and the family members are informed. To be specific, the treatment and care should be more reasonable, the changes in the condition should be timely, and the rescue should be more rapid. If this ten points can be achieved, the quality of medical treatment can be significantly improved, which will be very beneficial to reduce medical accidents and the risk of medical disputes.

Implement informed consent to prevent medical disputes

In different stages of medical activities, the hospital must clarify the purpose of the medical service contract, the process of disease development and the damage characteristics of the medical service, and the risks of the performance of the medical service contract through notification according to the actual situation of the patient; Several sets of treatment plans, clarify the advantages, disadvantages and side effects of each plan, put forward alternative and recommended diagnosis and treatment methods for patients to participate in the development and selection; inform the standards, prices and possible service periods of their services, and pass Active rescue measures may still lead to unexpected or unpredictable accidents; all patients who die should be informed of the patient's family members to perform autopsy, so as to achieve a consensus between doctors and patients and avoid the occurrence of most doctor-patient conflicts. In a case in which the medical agent infringed on the patient's right to information was represented by this lawyer, the patient was not informed of the fallopian tube removal during the operation, and was ultimately awarded a compensation of 100,000 yuan.

Building good doctor-patient relationships

At present, the tension between doctors and patients and constant conflicts are very important because of the poor service consciousness and inadequate services of some medical staff. For this reason, major hospitals have taken practical measures to strengthen the service awareness of medical staff, strengthen the service concept of medical staff, and improve the service attitude of medical staff. The hospital mainly requires medical staff from the following four points: Strengthen timely service To improve the efficiency of service work; strengthen the "careful" service attitude and improve the scientific nature of service work; strengthen the "response" service concept and improve the rigor of service work; respect and safeguard the rights and interests of patients and respect the right to information of patients.