Preventive Measures: How to avoid Litigation

Prevention in practice

The key steps are exercising reasonable skill and care in diagnosis and treatment, proper documentation of facts, and legally-valid informed consent.

Reasonable skill and care
There are 3 aspects of reasonable skill and care:

Medical aspect
First and foremost it is imperative for every doctor / hospital / nursing home to exercise reasonable skill and care expected of an average person with equivalent qualification and experience in similar circumstances.
Social aspect
We should always exhibit our reasonable skill and care to the patient/attendants/relatives, through expressions, body language, actions and discussions. These must be visibly palpable. We may be very sincere but failure to exhibit these gestures may lead to doubts in the mind of patients and their relatives.
Legal aspect
This includes documentation on exercising reasonable skill and care in consultation, diagnosis and treatment.
- This can be done by making good clinical notes of findings on examination and treatment given. Where there is failure to follow instructions, refusal to perform any investigation and failure to come for review on specified date, these should always be recorded in a prominent way. These negative records act as important tools while defending a case in a court of law.
- Please make sure that your handwriting is legible.