Thursday, 11 August 2016

Should medical doctors be responsible for their malpractice with carelessness?



Source background

In "KFC told to stop using chicken treated with antibiotics", the company that owns Kentucky Fried Chicken promised to limit the use of human antibiotics in its chicken by next year after facing new calls to stop using poultry that has been treated with antibiotics  which was claimed by medical experts that the routine use of antibiotics contributing to the rise of drug-resistant "super bug" infections that kill at least 23,000 Americans each year and generating a significant threat to global health
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My Yes/No question is:
Should professional medical doctors be responsible for their malpractice with carelessness?

My answer is:
Yes, doctors who give a wrong treatment to their patients should be responsible for it as it is concerning a life and death matter.

The issue customer's right to protection has been widely campaigned over three decades to people in the west. The advocates work very hard in introducing and promoting the issue and successfully established this mindset to its locals. We heard cases which customers had got compensation with the loss or abuse they were made from the carelessness of the professional service renders like a medical doctors. In Thailand you might be very surprised to hear that the patients seeing doctor can have only 3-5 minutes in consulting and receiving the prescription. I often doubted that how accurately the diagnosis had been made,The answer always is about the lack of number of doctors in the country. I do empathize and try to understand of how many patients a doctor need to see per day. But it is the matter of life and death. There are some cases like doctor had left  the operational tool in patient's abdomen and it was found later after five years when the patient having another surgery. When the case was spread out and there was a movement asking for enacting some measurements in our law that the doctors should be responsible for their malpractice rendered to patients, there were dissent voiced from the doctors. What do you think?  
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Reference
KFC told to stop using chicken treated with antibiotics. (2016, August 11).   BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37038166

16 comments:

  1. Kitt's post reminds me of my visits to doctors. I usually go to Bangkok Christian Hospital, which is near my home and seems to have competent doctors. But they do like to give me drugs. I often have to tell them to cancel some of the things they prescribe. I always take prescribed antibiotics, but I usually order the doctor to cancel pain drugs and sleep drugs, which I don't want to take and don't need. If I really was in pain, I would take them, but I'm not going to take them just because a doctor wants to make money for her hospital.

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    1. Peter

      Thank you for sharing us your personal story. I remembered I also had got some vitamin tablets from the prescription when seeing doctors in a private hospital. The price of the vitamin tablets is double when buying outside the hospital. like you, I also got pain killers which we can get from any drug stores which a cheaper price. I would say when it involves with business, making profits in order to survive or to accumulate wealth for company becomes essential. Even though the patients who visit private hospital are able to pay for bills, an unnecessary and over prescription would be brought to attention for public in order to settle this existing problems

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  2. I have mixed feeling after reading your blog post. It's an interesting topic and also the most controversial one. From my point of view, I totally agree with you for your topic; that the doctor should be responsible for their malpractice if it's resulted from their carelessness. I couldn't agree more with you on the point that the patient has a very short consulting time with the doctor after a half day waiting. The classic answer to this will always be the lack number of doctor, comparing to the amount of patient. Such problem in public hospital is completely make sense to me. But for private hospitals? Nah. I don't think so.

    However, there's some part of your answer which I quite disagree. While your Y/N question totally makes sense to me, I am not sure what do you mean by "give a wrong treatment" in your answer. As a sister who has a doctor as the older sister, I feel sympathetic for the doctor who did their best in curing patient but it turned out to be the wrong kind of diseases. Doctor diagnoses by using presumptions toward the presence abnormality and patient's medical history. This process is quite challenging as it's concerning with many factors: complexity of the diseases, the unknown medical history of the patience or the lack of experience of the doctor itself.

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    1. I support the point that Mieng stated above. I believe that every doctor does not want his/her patient to be fatal after receiving treatment. If case of death occurred, we should sympathize doctors when they have already done their treatment with best practice. In contrast, if treatment failure were happened because of malpractice with carelessness, a doctor would be responsible in the same way as the others did.

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  3. Thanks for your comment. When I first wrote the word 'Wrong treatment', I wanted to say a wrong diagnosis which leads to a wrong treatment. In case of a popular Thai TV actor Tridsadee “Por” Sahawong who had to battle against a severe and rare form of dengue fever and died later. There is a rumor that he might had survived from the disease if he was diagnosed of his symptom correctly at an early stage and was referred to have a proper treatment at another hospital before his condition getting worse. But it is all about suspicion which I dare not to make a confirmation.

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  4. I think everyone should admit for their own mistake especially doctors, their career is to heal illnesses or injuries so I think doctors should be responsible for their malpractice. However, it’s also our responsibility to to check doctor’s experience and abilities as to be sure he has not built any malpractice before. I also think that we should do some research on disease in order to ask questions clearly and understand diagnostic and treatment process.

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  5. Doctors should be responsible for their malpractice with their carelessness. Some doctors don't care patients but they just concern only their interests. For me, I haven't experienced like these cases before but it's very expensive for me when I pay to recover my illness at a private hospital. In addition, I think everyone could be accessed for medication as a high quality standard because this is a basic need for our life.

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    1. Oat, do you mean that governments should manage medical treatment for all citizens?

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    2. No, I didn't mean that, but governments should help or subsidize only poor people who can't access medical treatments. Sorry to reply very late Peter.

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  6. Although I often disagree with my doctors about the drugs they prescribe, I generally trust them to give much better diagnoses and advice than I could give myself. The last time I went to a doctor I realised as soon as she said and explained my problem how totally wrong I had been: I wished I had gone earlier.

    As Mieng and others point out, most doctors do do their best for patients in stressful situation, especially in a public hospital.

    I was also reminded of the TV series I've been watching for the past month or so. House M.D. is about Dr. Gregory House, a pretty awful person but a great doctor, except to his patients. One thing I think the show helps us to realise is that doctors are often wrong: House and his diagnostic team always get the answer in the end (it's a TV show!). They do their best, but medicine is prone to mistakes, and I'm not sure that making a mistake is the same as malpractice.

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  7. It's a bit silly to tell you all that the reason I bought this issue up not because I want to find fault with any doctors but just to complete my assignment/homework. I understand that there are no doctors who intend to make mistakes when giving treatment to their patients. A classic suggestion to patients is a second opinion from the expert might be helpful for them.

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    1. But I think that there are careless and incompetent doctors. In fact, sometimes I've gone to doctors in clinics with friends and was not impressed. Perhaps they don't intend to make mistakes, but they do make mistakes because they do not care enough. These seem to me the sort of doctors who should be hit with massive malpractice suits by the patients that they harm.

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    2. And even if your motives were not perfectly pure, the post has led to an interesting discussion in the ideas being exchanged.
      We don't think less of doctors because they also have a variety of motives, including making money. Do we think less of doctors (and English teachers) because they also need money to live and they like to be fairly paid?
      Fairly paid ... that's an interesting idea.

      When Sabri is negotiating on Durrell's behalf for her house, is the three hundred pounds they finally pay the woman a fair price?

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    3. It's very difficult to settle the argument when it is concerning with 'to be fair' or 'not to be fair' to whom and in whose eyes? It's an interesting topic to explore.

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    4. It's very difficult to settle the argument when it is concerning with 'to be fair' or 'not to be fair' to whom and in whose eyes? It's an interesting topic to explore.

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    5. A whole range of interesting questions, as Kitt's questions show.

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