Chapter 3 Guidance on answering selected questions from the book

Question

Is there a problem with labelling a professional ‘negligent’ on the basis of a single incident and not considering the individual’s whole career?

Guidance

This is one of the major difficulties with the current law on clinical negligence (see the discussion of the Bawa-Garba and Bramhall cases at pp.105-6). In the case of Dr Bawa-Garba it appears there were a wide range of causes of the death, many of which were structural and beyond the control of an individual doctor. It is widely thought that in cases of that kind it is unfair that the doctor who happens to be most immediate to the death is blamed for what are systemic problems. On the other hand as the case of Dr Bramhall shows there are other cases where it is the unique wrongdoing of the doctor which is at fault. Even in such a case there may be questions about whether there should have been in place systems to ensure that individual wrongdoing of this kind did not take place.

Readings

Karen-Paz, T. (2010) ‘Liability regimes, reputation loss, and defensive medicine’, Medical

Law Review 18: 363.

Chamberlain, J. (2017) ‘Malpractice, Criminality, and Medical Regulation: Reforming

the Role of the GMC in Fitness to Practise Panels’, Medical Law Review 25: 1.