Doctors Have To Follow The Law

by Kevin Smith Author

In the typical world, there are many services for which help society to keep functioning every day. Those basic public services include police, fire, governing body, and so forth. With the amount of power and influence that professionals have in the service industry, laws and regulations are set in place so that the power by the few service people is kept in check and not abused. Of the professions, one that is top of the list are medical personnel. This includes doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and emergency medical technicians. Hence, the doctors, policies, and issues need to be reviewed to ensure the well-being of the general populace.

With the rising costs of medical services and the mandates from the government for every citizen to be covered by some form of health insurance, the healthcare industry is constantly under a lot of scrutiny and regulatory checkpoints. On top of that, doctors have to go through over a decade of training and schooling to practice medicine. With all the pressure and studying, it’s common for them to create a sort of complex where it’s believed that they know all and can do no wrong. However, that’s simply not the case.

Policies Are Set to Protect Patients

Policies are set forth by the consent of the people to protect the general public. Some of the common items that are protected include doctor patient confidentiality. As indicated in the wording, it’s the duty of the medical professional to not share information about what was discussed or diagnosed with anyone else. That includes not saying it to another doctor that is not helping that particular patient as well as any other patients. This is to prevent personal and possibly damaging information to be exposed to those that don’t need to know this information. For example, if medical information was released and an employer were to learn of the condition, then the company could end up treating the employee differently with the privileged information.

How Can These Policies be Infringed?

With so much training and policies in place, there still are issues that arise. Common issue mentioned includes the release of privileged information. Another issue is when the interest of the medical professional are tainted either by a bias against the patient for which they’re seeing, receiving funding from a particular pharmaceutical company to push their new wonder drug, or purposely not servicing a patient for a myriad of different reasons.

The Law Is There to Help

Finally, with the health of the population in the hands of few, it’s important to make sure that medical malpractice does not occur and the laws governing doctors are followed. However, when imperfect doctors make horrible mistakes, it becomes necessary to involve the law and expert medical witnesses to be able to know both sides of a medical situation to help those wronged by doctors to get the justice that is needed.

To ensure the health of the general populace, it is necessary to keep medical professionals in check and to have experts in the medical field. With people’s lives literally in their hands, medical malpractices have and will continue to affect innocent lives. That’s why so much education is required, so many polices are in place, and why seeking legal counsel and using a medical expert witness when wronged by a medical professional is essential.