Accidents Don't Just Happen

A well-intentioned journalist, who is not a physician, recently wrote an article in <i>The New York Times</i> asking why medical mistakes occur. There, the author advanced a theory that if doctors were better paid, there would be higher quality of care, and fewer misdiagnoses. This theory assumes that doctors are mainly motivated by money, which, in this author's opinion, is not the primary impetus for a doctor, or any other medical practitioner, to do the job right. The law defines medical negligence simply: the failure to do what a reasonably prudent practitioner would do in the same or similar circumstances. Medical negligence, in a legal sense, does not differ from other forms of negligence: When a person ' doctor or layman ' departs from the accepted standard of care, that is negligent conduct. Numerically, this vagary translates to mean that a practitioner has not deviated from the applicable standard of care if he or she does 'that which 51% of practitioners would do.'