Physician Malpractice Law i.e. Why Are Doctors So Easy To Sue?

[jerard]

Hopefully a few lawyers with some decent experience and knowledge can help me with this. It is probably a pretty simple thing, but for myself I have difficulty understanding this system. I am a physician. Why is that physicians as a profession are so easy to sue sucessfully as opposed to other professions?

All that has to happen in most cases is that some negative event supposedly related to medical care has to occur, and then the plantiff's attorney has to get his or her hands on a random doctor that is of the same specialty as the doctor being sued that is willing to go on record saying that the defendant physician was negligent. Then the plantiff has a very decent chance of getting a settlement. Nothing has to be actually proven in terms of whether or not the defendant actually was negligent, reckless, etc.

So why is that lawsuits against people of other professions are not as successful? Say I am taken to court in a civil case. My lawyer does a terrible job, and I lose my shirt. So why can't I get my hands on another lawyer who will review the records, testify that my original lawyer operated well below the 'standard of care' and bring a 'malpractice' suit against my original lawyer to recover damages? In theory, this concept could be applied to any profession. Your mechanic, accountant, etc etc. Please enlighten me. Is the legal code just not built to protect physicians?

[otis]

Isn't it the lawyers making the rules and the lawyers get paid a percentage of the payouts and the LAWYERS getting paid on both sides of the cases. Sounds like lawyers don't like doctors...............

[nickson]

There are several reasons. First of all, everybody thinks that physicians are wealthy. They all want a piece of them. When a medical malpractice case is taken to court, the jury observes a family who has lost a newborn versus a wealthy doctor. The jury wants to see some punishment. Most often the case, the jury is going to be biased against the doctor. The other reasons is that a physician's job is extremely risky. Because it is so risky, doctors become doctors to be 100% perfect because if he/she is only 99% perfect, then 1 out of every 100 patients will get injured. Take a teacher as another example. If a teacher isn't 100% perfect, it's not too big a deal. Maybe he/she didn't teach a concept too well one day in class, and the next day the students are confused, and then the teacher clarifies. In medicine, you don't get a second chance. By the second chance, either the patient is dead, or the patient is pissed and tries to sue you. Nobody's going to sue a professor for presenting material in a confusing manner. As we all have heard, "anyone can be sued for anything anytime". This is pretty much true. It's just much easier for doctors to be sued because all they have to be is imperfect. None of us is perfect; neither are doctors.

[elkan80]

First of all, physicians are held to a high standard of care. Society has decided that mistakes on a human are just less acceptable than mistakes to a car or even to a pet. Second, a lot of medicine is an "art" rather than a science - in many situations, 100 different doctors would find 100 ways to deal with a patient's complaints. This makes lawsuits easier because as you noted, there's always a second opinion. Although in my experience it's a little harder than you make out to find a second doctor who will call another doctor's conduct reckless or negligent. For the above reasons and because of costs, insurance companies are a lot more willing to settle.

Keep in mind that you don't often hear about the successful suits against mechanics, etc. because they're usually so much smaller. A person doesn't get pain and suffering (unless it causes an accident) because the mechanic installed the wrong size windshield wipers. It's also a lot easier to fix something like that than a botched laser eye surgery.