Source: The Hindu
Context: The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has taken into consideration the healthcare sector’s long-standing demand to frame guidelines for determining medical negligence cases.
Background:
- It has been more than 17 years since the Supreme Court, for the first time in the Jacob Mathew case in 2005, directed the Centre to frame statutory rules in consultation with the-then medical education regulator Medical Council of India (MCI) to deal with medical negligence cases as it impacts both doctors and patients.
About Medical Negligence:
- Medical negligence, also known as medical malpractice, refers to a situation where a healthcare professional fails to provide the appropriate standard of care to a patient, resulting in harm, injury, or death.
Supreme Court criteria on Medical Negligence:
- In Kusum Sharma v. Batra Hospital & Medical Research Centre, a two-judge Supreme Court panel recognized several criteria to regulate medical negligence cases.
Bolam Test
- The Bolam test was created in 1957 as a result of the judgement of the House of Lords in Bolam v Frierm Barnet Hospital Management Committee, which said that a doctor may be able to escape a lawsuit for negligence if he can show that other medical practitioners would have behaved in the same manner.
- The Bolam test, which argues that a doctor is not negligent if what he has done would be approved by a responsible body of medical opinion in the relevant speciality at the time, remains the principal test to assess ‘standard of care’.
Various incidents of medical negligence:
- Foreign matter left inside after surgery
- Wrong part Removed
- Doctor acting in a callous manner
- Death due to transfusion of blood from a wrong group
Implications of medical negligence:
- Physical harm
- Emotional harm
- Financial harm
- Loss of trust
- Impact on the healthcare system