|
So from this case, standard of care’s extent had been changed. Form standard owed to a patient in all things is determined by medical judgment to decide of judge.
7. Significant advantages and disadvantages of judging a professional person’s negligence conduct.
Professional person’s conduct must conform to the standard of a practitioner of normal skill and intelligence. Practitioner who represents themselves as being capable of attaining standards of skill either in relation to the public generally. This is based on the “Bolam test”27 of negligence—that practitioners are not negligent if they act in accordance with practice accepted by a responsible body of medical opinion.28
However, The High Court reject “Bolam test” and courts have also held that a doctor’s duty to disclose is subject to a “therapeutic privilege” which may justify withholding information that would harm the patient’s health. 29 But I think it does not justify withholding information that might prevent a patient consenting to a non-essential procedure. According to doctor’s standards of care from the High Court decision in Rogers v Whitaker,30 it includes following advantages and disadvantage of professional person’s standards of negligence.
Advantage is courts suggest that judges are moving away from accepting what “reasonable doctors” might do to supporting what “reasonable patients” might expect. It changed from the standard of care owed to a patient in all things is determined by medical judgment to judge judgment. Disadvantage is that doctors will opt for “defensive medicine”. Firstly, Doctors will choose the treatment for the patient which is most likely to be “legally safe” even if they believe that such treatment may not be strictly warranted. This may be unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming. Secondly, it will encourage more medical litigation, which in turn will increase premiums and overall health care costs. Lastly, it will affect good doctor/patient relationships and possibly dissuade good young doctors to shy away from high-risk specialist fields.31
|
