Medical professionals throughout India welcomed a Supreme Courtroom ruling final week that shields docs from negligence claims primarily based solely on sudden therapy outcomes, emphasising that legal responsibility have to be confirmed by way of clear proof of departure from commonplace medical practices.
The landmark judgment, which medical professionals say may assist curtail spurious negligence complaints, harassed that problems—even unexpected ones—don’t robotically point out skilled misconduct.
“This has been a long-pending demand to make sure docs don’t face instances that don’t qualify as medical negligence,” mentioned Dr MC Misra, senior surgeon and former director of All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi. “Some quantity of danger all the time stays following not simply advanced however even easy procedures, significantly in surgical procedure. If the result isn’t as anticipated, it can’t be termed as medical negligence.”
The court docket rejected the precept of “res ipsa loquitur”—that means “the factor speaks for itself”—in medical instances, with Justices PS Narasimha and Pankaj Mithal ruling that poor outcomes alone can not set up negligence.
Dr Misra, added, “It’s a honest evaluation of the SC. Individuals should additionally perceive error of judgment is just not negligence. What’s essential in such instances is to see whether or not sufficient administration of complication was executed in a well timed method or not. What we may do is to have a system in place like they’ve in New Zealand which they name ‘no fault compensation’. In case there may be an error by the medical workforce and there may be an untoward therapy end result, the household might be compensated for it.”
Dr Okay Srinath Reddy, founding father of the Public Well being Basis of India, mentioned the ruling “clearly separates intentional malpractice and incorrect or incompetent care from unintended adversarial penalties of appropriately administered care as per extensively accepted skilled norms.”
“Outcomes could not match affected person’s expectations on account of quite a lot of elements unrelated to the physician’s skilled competence or diligent consideration to affected person security. Every case of an adversarial end result have to be judged on the premise of an entire evaluation of all contributory elements with out a prejudicial assumption of medical negligence,” he added.
The bench emphasised that medical procedures carry inherent dangers, and unpredictable outcomes shouldn’t robotically result in malpractice conclusions.
Workplace-bearers of state medical councils, who examine instances of medical negligence together with the police, additionally admit there’s a skinny line between medical negligence and error of judgment.
Delhi Medical Council’s Dr Girish Tyagi famous that while sufferers usually view problems as negligence, “Out of 100 instances we study, at the very least 85 to 90 don’t fall beneath medical negligence however are instances the place the therapy end result was not as anticipated.”
“That is an exemplary judgment; nevertheless we must always be mindful docs ought to be judged primarily based on information and abilities imparted to them as not each physician is a specialist. Additionally, it’s excessive time to implement NEXT examination to have high quality Indian Medical Graduates,” mentioned Dr SK Sarin, former chairman, board of governors, Medical Council of India.
Dr Kunal Saha, President, Individuals for Higher Therapy, mentioned, “Though there may be no argument that holding a physician responsible for medical negligence ought to be primarily based on “clear proof” towards the accused physician, as noticed by the Apex Courtroom however court docket’s quite credulous remark that a physician is just not negligent solely as a result of the therapy didn’t produce anticipated outcome does an incredible disservice to the numerous real victims of gross medical negligence throughout India. Over the previous twenty years that our group has been coping with quite a few medical victims and representing a lot of them in courts professional bono, I’ve not come throughout a single the place the sufferer’s household has opted to hunt justice solely as a result of the affected person didn’t reply to the therapy as anticipated. If individuals in India have been suing docs for each unsuccessful therapy then each loss of life of a affected person would have resulted in a lawsuit towards docs. Sadly, virtually the precise reverse is actuality in India as we speak.”
