Essay: Medical negligence – difficult cases

Who decides has to interpret a language that does not dominate, who has to give opinions thinks: “Today is it, tomorrow it’s me.” Lawyers already know the lesson: that the case is coarse or is best to jump into the civil. One thing is to prove that there was damage, another is
“Absolve Court negligent homicide of doctors.” “Rheumatologist acquitted of negligent homicide charges.” “Absolve Court of Coimbra doctor and nurse child death of the accused.” “Defendants acquitted in the case of the blind Santa Maria.”
Find other evidence in cases of suspected medical malpractice is so rare that there are now lawyers who advise clients to jump the criminal proceedings and go immediately to a civil action. “In a civil action have to prove less. I do not have to prove that this health care provider violated the legis artis. I just have to prove that someone was well and died or became ill because of an error or a medical error that caused damage and there are at least entitled to compensation, “said the lawyer John Nabais.
Why is so difficult to prove in criminal proceedings that someone died or suffered a personal injury due to a medical error? Or cases are egregious, such as scissors forgotten in the abdomen during surgery, or will not be easy to gather enough evidence to show intent or direct link between the medical procedure and the injury or death. Ie, that it is indeed a homicide by negligence or that it was the lack of medical care that caused an injury to the patient. Another problem is to define what care they should be required in certain circumstances: even if the doctor or nurse could have done more, is that such acts were required?
Aida dos Santos underwent plastic surgery to the abdomen in September 1995. A few days later was discharged, although they have opened a hole in the scar and the risk of infection while sick obese and diabetic, are larger. Turned out to be hospitalized again, but just over three weeks later went into the operating room so that he be made a surgical debridement of the wound. Already come out connected to the ventilator. He died on November 25, 1995, a victim of septicemia, the Red Cross Hospital in Lisbon. The Anisia daughter never got that he be made an autopsy to determine the bacteria’s entrance. The wait goes on for 18 years, as i said in the edition of last Thursday.
In the ruling, dated 2003, the judge recognized that the hospital “does not mean and can not mean abandoning the patient to their fate” and that although “the sick to travel to the hospital for dressings, the surgeon has not healed from to watch, although aware of the postoperative risk of infection or inflammation “of a patient, for being” obese and diabetic, “required” extra care “. Nevertheless, either the attending physician or the plastic surgeon eventually acquitted. The ratio of Lisbon had then repeat the sentence, but the case prescribed in the judge drawer.
MEDICAL FOR MEDICAL The complexity of these processes is often cited as reason to eternizarem or to end with acquittals. Who goes by the courts points to other reasons: prosecutors and judges have to interpret a language that does not dominate and expertise on medical practices, written by clinics, they are hardly exempt. “There is much corporatism of doctors is very difficult to find anyone who makes a serious opinion or objective The majority of opinions refuge in hypothetical questions What is normal because who does think,… Today is it, tomorrow I can be me,” i tells John Nabais. In criminal cases, the lawyer remembers getting a doctor was convicted and the victim received compensation at around 40 thousand euros, “but because it was a gross case,” the doctor who operated on the spine of a patient to introduce a kind of metal frame to straighten the spine will have forgotten you a compress inside your body, which would lead to an infection.
The lawyer Joao Medeiros, also specializes in medical malpractice cases, stresses that, “taking the extremely scandalous cases, doctors tend to defend each other, or at least to give the benefit of doubt.” Is convinced that there filings because there are also unfounded complaints:. “He is the eight to 80. There was a time when nobody processed medical Now anything that no longer understands and takes place in a hospital is reason to complain And. medicine is not an exact science, there are things that escape. ” But also there because “people who appreciate the complaints have clinical knowledge and make it or on the basis of statements of the suspects themselves or opinions of the Medical Association, the College of each specialty, which they are still made by people who are professional colleagues, “recalls Medeiros.
If a case is filed at the outset – and they are not rare cases that do not come to trial – or the complainant asks reopening of inquiry or instruction opening. But to do so must provide new evidence and “not easy” to reach particular clinical data or “find doctors who accept to go against others,” reinforces criminal attorney. Delays of the entities responsible for the opinions tend to perpetuate the surveys and prescriptions are also not rare: as the frame of criminal negligent homicide is short limitation periods are too. Moreover, “taking in cases where the doctor forgets the scissors is always controversial issue,” applying the principle of in dubio pro reo. “Part of it is assumed that even if things have hardly gone doctors were convinced that they were acting well,” said John Medeiros, who joins the list of critical the problem of administrative courts responsible for deciding where it It understands that it is the fault of a public hospital. “Apply the rules of civil, but these judges are not used to make the assessment of evidence at trial.”
Medeiros is used to being on both sides: sometimes the side of the accused, sometimes on the side of the victims. Almost 15 years ago that carries the story of Sancha Zoio that due to delays in the delivery of assistance at the Hospital São Francisco Xavier in Lisbon, was born like a plant: without seeing, without speaking, without walking. The European Court of Human Rights has condemned the Portuguese State due to delays in solving the case. The mother and the lawyer are still waiting for the outcome of the administrative courts. Sancha has died, the father too.