Family Practices and Medical Malpractice

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20th Feb 2017

So many people have filed medical malpractice lawsuits against their doctors that is has affected and had serious implications for family practice doctors in particular. Patients have sued their doctors mainly for lack of or a delay in proper diagnosis, maternity practices, negligence in trauma care, handling issues in a time conscious manner, providing care without consent, and failure to refer out patients who require specialized treatments.

Most of the malpractice cases stem from a failure to diagnosis a condition that is already existent. Sometimes this lack of diagnosis comes from the family practice doctors who are under extreme stress. The biggest problem that results from this is the lack of identifying it in the first place. Family practice doctors work chaotic schedules that are extremely conflicting and have been viewed as almost superhuman. Recently, the dust has settled and now researchers are seeing that super humans do not exist and it is possible that many medical malpractice lawsuits can be avoided by not expecting superhuman behavior.

Most of the time family practice physicians are treated by other doctors for stress related issues. Stress is said to have contributed greatly to the decline of the health and well being of all people and family practice doctors as well as doctors in general are not falling short of that assumption. Doctors can become depressed and exhausted which inadvertently will affect their profession. There have been several indications and accusations where doctors were sued because of negligence that resulted from stress related error.

Several programs are since rising to the forefront to assist family practice doctors but not limited to in reducing the amount of stress that they are facing hence, reducing the amount of error causing medical malpractice to soar. These programs are intended to improve a doctors physical and emotional well being, enhance job performance, and their personal satisfaction.

Family practice doctors that experience medical malpractice have a very difficult time obtaining further coverage, affording insurance, and the overall stress that the doctor suffers from the litigation itself can be traumatizing. Family practice doctors are sometimes holding a two sided sword. One side is the obligation to the patient to pursue their needs and the other is dealing with managed health care plans/ AKA insurance companies.

Even in cases where the family practice doctor may not be all at fault, many times they are still held accountable over the managed health care plans, unjustly. If a doctor prescribes a medication that he believes to be the best drug of choice for a particular condition and the insurance company will not cover that as their first choice drug, which is at fault? The doctor is the person who interacted with the patient and should be allowed to prescribe what he feels in his expert opinion would be the best choice. If you took your car to a mechanic and he diagnosed it with needing a new carburetor, you surely wouldn’t go across the street and have them fix the brakes. It is just common sense.

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