Stuff of nightmares: Criminal prosecution for malpractice
Knowing how the law distinguishes criminal acts committed in practice from civil malpractice should ease your fears about the rare (but terrifying) prosecution
IN THIS ARTICLE
Avoid prosecution with “quality medicine”
The best way to avoid criminal prosecution is, of course, to practice good medicine. Quality medicine rests on the principle that caregivers respond to patients’ needs in a timely, appropriate manner. Your patients will, of course, come to the end of their life sooner or later. But patients in the hands of a good physician will not have that end hastened by disregard for sound medical practices.
In 1980, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court enunciated a standard for physicians that no honorable physician would have difficulty meeting: “A doctor will be protected,” the court said, “if he acts on a good faith judgment that is not grievously unreasonable by medical standards.”15
