Deborah M. Eng, MS, MA and Scott J. Schweikart, JD, MBE
A just culture perspective suggests that punitive responses to those who err should be reserved for those who have willfully and irremediably caused harm.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(9):E779-783. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.779.
Language barriers that affect medical care may have legal consequences. The areas of legal concern for doctors are medical malpractice, informed consent, duty to warn, and patients' privacy rights.
I’m sorry laws, enacted in the majority of states, encourage physicians to apologize for unexpected outcomes and errors by making such apologies inadmissible in civil court to prove liability.
Medical malpractice pits the legal system's ethics of client advocacy against the medical profession's ethics of patient advocacy. Fear of liability may lead to defensive medicine, an aberration of both professions' intent.