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MUTATION - October 2005 |
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| LEGALLY SPEAKING |
| Suresh Yadav (5th Sem) Rekha Singha (5th Sem) |
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In one of the cities of North Gujarat, a 22 yrs. old female got an injury on her little finger of left foot on road. She HERSELF approached the General Practitioner who referred her to an Orthopedic Surgeon. She herself reached the Orthopedic Doctor. The doctor asked for amputation of her injured finger as it was badly crushed and her husband was called there. The doctor took a BLANKET CONSENT (Consent on a preformed document which authorizes the doctor to perform a surgery but the so called authorization is ambiguous, as to be almost worthless, as it designates only name of the patient but does not give information regarding the surgery & its complications) from her husband for the operation. Doctor himself induced the General Anesthesia ’KETAMINE’ [Dissociative anesthesia] and ANXOL (Diazepam) and started operating .After the operation, the doctor was unable to resuscitate the patient from anesthesia and the patient went into coma and finally died. The dead body was sent for post mortem examination and forensic science laboratory reported that KETAMINE was present in blood. Her husband challenged the doctor in the Court of Law. Doctor was charged for both civil and criminal negligence.
So readers, do you know what mistakes did the doctor commit which took him to the doors of court?
1. CONSENT: Here her husband’s consent was taken, while if the patient is older than 18 yrs, consent should have been taken from the patient only. Also the consent should have been an INFORMED CONSENT i.e. the patient should have been told about the procedures of the operations, its complications, success rates and other alternatives instead of BLANKET CONSENT. If the patient is less than 18 yrs or not fully conscious or not well oriented, then the consent is to be taken from parent or guardian. For these 2 mistakes, the doctor was held responsible for civil negligence. |
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| A doctor should not handle two fields at a time. A Surgeon, even if he holds a degree as an Anesthetist, he can’t perform 2 tasks together which he did and as it resulted in death of the patient he was held responsible for criminal negligence. |
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So friends, in spite of being a hypothetical case, it shows us the situations which we are likely to face as a doctor and mistakes we should not commit so as to stay away even from the staircase of Court of law.
Before we end we would like to thank Dr. Pratik R. Patel, HOD, FM Dept., for his valuable guidance for this article.
THIS IS A HYPOTHETICAL CASE HAVING NO RELATION WITH ANY LIVING OR DEAD PERSON, INSTITUTE. IF ANY RELATION FOUND IT WILL JUST BE A CO-INCIDENCE. |
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