Medico-Legal Principles of Emergency and Intensive Medical Care

Abstract

In our modern litigation-prone society, every medical practitioner faces the risk of being sued for malpractice. The American Medical Association warns that we are approaching a crisis in medical malpractice rivaling the much publicized malpractice crisis of 1975 (1). The media are full of stories about physicians being driven out of specialty areas or quitting practice altogether because of inability to obtain affordable liability coverage. Recently, the largest medical malpractice insurance underwriter in the country, St. Paul’s, announced that it was suspending the issue of all new malpractice policies because of the marked increase in both the number of claims being filed and the amounts of judgements being awarded. Some attribute the current situation to excesses on the part of attorneys or the desire of insurance companies to maintain an unreasonable profit margin (2). Others, pointing out that the incidence of true medical malpractice far exceeds the number of claims actually filed, conclude that the real problem lies in the number and magnitude of medical errors (3).