My wife got almost a year in advanced mammography screening and interventional radiology (biopsies and stuff like that) while working in the UK, and now that she's back in the US, she avoids mammo work like the plague because of the high lawsuit rate in that field.
Get this - The AMA (or was it the ACR?) did a study that showed that in the US, deaths from breast cancer have dropped by about 80%, yet malpractice lawsuits for breast cancer cases have risen several HUNDRED percent.
Huh? Docs are saving hundreds of lives using modern techniques to detect breast cancer earlier, and they're rewarded by getting their butts sued by those who somehow still get cancer. Thanks for nothing... During her career, my wife has detected dozens of cases early enough to save the patient, but she is avoiding that field as much as possible because she is risking her career, livelihood, our life savings, and our home every time she does a breast screening in the US.
So she doesn't do that whenever possible and because she's a good radiologist with better than average training, there will most likely be patients who do not get screened and saved as a result.
Most types of medical practice are an art just as much as a science, and there can not possibly be any guarantees. Yes deliberate criminal action on the part of a doctor should be addressed, but a mistake is simply tragic. Doctors are human and make mistakes, so if we expect docs to even TRY, we better give them the benefit of the doubt and not sue every time something goes wrong. Guess what the death rate per doctor would be if half the docs simply quit because they're sick of being legally assaulted every time a patient dies or treatment is unsuccessful?
And oh yea, "trial by peers" is a freaking joke when it comes to medical malpractice lawsuits. When was the last time the jury in a medical malpractice trial was made up of impartial doctors? There are doctors who give up practicing medicine entirely, and spend their lives doing nothing but being expert witnesses AGAINST other doctors in malpractice lawsuits. They specialize in nothing but convincing juries made up of highschool dropouts that the doctor went to 4 years of med school followed by 4 more years of 16-hour days training, for the sole purpose of deliberately mistreating people.
I say shoot all the lawyers, and only treat those who have never participated in medical malpractice lawsuits
