Medical responsibility lawsuits have become a fact of life in every
physician's medical practice. However, there is evidence that physicians
are increasingly practising defensive medicine, ordering more tests than
may be necessary and avoiding patients with complicated conditions. The
modern practice of medicine is increasingly complicated by factors
beyond the traditional realm of patient care, including novel
technologies, loss of physician autonomy, and economic pressures. A
continuing and significant issue affecting physicians and the healthcare
system is malpractice. In the latter half of the 20th century, there was
a major change in the attitude of the public towards the medical
profession. People were made aware of the huge advances in medical
technology, because health problems increasingly tended to attract media
interest and wide publicity. Medicine is a victim of its own success in
this respect, and people are now led to expect the latest techniques and
perfect outcomes on all occasions. This burst of technology and
hyper-specialization in many fields of medicine means that each
malpractice claim is transformed into a scientific challenge, requiring
specific preparation in analysis and judgment of the clinical case in
question. The role of legal medicine becomes more and more peculiar in
this judicial setting, often giving rise to erroneous interpretations
and hasty scientific verdicts, but guidelines on the methodology of
ascertainments and criteria of evaluation are lacking all over the
world.The aim of this volume is to clarify the steps required for
sequential in-depth analysis of events and consequences of medical
actions, in order to verify whether, in the presence of damage, errors
or non-observance of rules of conduct by health personnel exist, and
which causal values and links of their hypothetical misconduct are
involved.
