title: [Legislating the precautionary principle and physician patient relations in the area of severe diseases with uncertain outcomes. Some proposals].
abstract: The application to medicine of the caution principle goes with increasing legal problems between patients and doctors. In the field of severe diseases with uncertain outcome are analyzed below some possible ways of remedying a situation which could induce from doctors a reluctance to take some necessary risks. These ways could consist on one part to include a special training and perhaps selection of the practitioners involved, in order to insure that all the needs of their patients, psychologic, spirituals, culturals, ethicals will be met with. On another part it is proposed that decision theory should be fully studied in medical school in order to allow physicians to explicitly include in medical records the evaluation of risks and the rationale for choosing a given strategy, with regards to what is known objectively and subjectively about different probabilities, which were the utilities and preferences and scientific as well as ethic criteria considered in a given situation of uncertainty.
authors.affiliation: Université Paris XIII.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Israel
mesh_terms: D003469:Culture; D003657:Decision Making; D003662:Decision Theory; D003675:Defensive Medicine / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians'; D016896:Treatment Outcome