4-3 Case Study: Claims of Negligence

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Case Study: Claims of Negligence
A successful negligence claim by the man’s estate can only be achieved if the death of the 46-year old man was caused by a subdural hematoma. The man was brought to the hospital after an automobile accident (Oyebode, 2013). There was a possibility that the man had some brain injuries and that is why he was feeling a lot of pain but was still alert. The physician did not examine the kind injury that was causing the pain but instead, he went ahead to inject the man with morphine which is a pain reliever though the dose he gave was not an overdose. The doctor should have also questioned the man about his health before administering the morphine drug (Hugh &Dekker, 2009). In defense, the doctor could have said that he wanted to give the patient more blood first then examine the injuries but the patient declined, and he could not go against the wish of the patient. This defense could apply because doctors are always required to respect a patient’s wish failure to which he or she may face penalizing actions from the General Medical Council and may face some criminal charges if anything goes wrong.
The doctor can be sued for not inquiring about the patient’s health before administering the morphine (Owen, 2006). For a doctor to find the most relevant treatment for a patient, he or she should be aware of the patient’s health issues. If he had known that the patient was a drug addict, he would have found a better way of treating the patient by first considering the drugs the patient had taken on the night he was hit by the automobile (Husak, 2011).

Suppose he would have known that the man was under the influence of some drugs he was supposed to consider the effects of the drugs and morphine before administering morphine intravenously.
References
Hugh, T. B., & Dekker, S. W. (2009). Hindsight bias and outcome bias in the social construction of medical negligence: a review. Journal of law and medicine, 16(5), 846-857.
Husak, D. (2011). Negligence, belief, blame and criminal liability: The special case of forgetting. Criminal Law and Philosophy, 5(2), 199-218.
Owen, D. G. (2006). The five elements of negligence. Hofstra L. Rev., 35, 1671.
Oyebode, F. (2013). Clinical errors and medical negligence. Medical Principles and Practice, 22(4), 323-333.