title: Physician's error: medical or legal concept?
abstract: This article deals with the common term of different physician's errors that often happen in daily practice of health care. Author begins with the term of medical malpractice, defined broadly as practice of unjustified acts or failures to act upon the part of a physician or other health care professionals, which results in harm to the patient. It is a common term that includes many types of medical errors, especially physician's errors. The author also discusses the concept of physician's error in particular, which is understood no more in traditional way only as classic error in acting something manually wrong without necessary skills (medical concept), but as an error which violates patient's basic rights and which has its final legal consequence (legal concept). In every case the essential element of liability is to establish this error as a breach of the physician's duty. The first point to note is that the standard of procedure and the standard of due care against which the physician will be judged is not going to be that of the ordinary reasonable man who enjoys no medical expertise. The court's decision should give finale answer and legal qualification in each concrete case. The author's conclusion is that higher protection of human rights in the area of health equaly demands broader concept of physician's error with the accent to its legal subject matter.
authors.affiliation: The Institute of Social Sciences, University of Belgrade, Serbia.
authors.forename: Hajrija M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Mujovic-Zornic
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D016365:Liability, Legal; D008318:Malpractice / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D019300:Medical Errors / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D010820:Physicians / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000592:standards