Abstract

GHERARDI, Carlos R.  and  GHERARDI, Natalia. Court intervention in medical decisions and the generation of new conflicts. Medicina (B. Aires) [online]. 2007, vol.67, n.5, pp.502-510. ISSN 0025-7680.

In the last decades, medical decisions are increasingly submitted to the courts of law for a number of reasons, also in our country. The various causes and different issues involved in such proceedings require comments referred to the possibility of causing an additional conflict to that which the courts of law are in theory required to address. In that context, this paper explores the repeated cases in which, due to the lack of positive legislation on a given issue, or due to different interpretations of existing legislation, or for lack of understanding of scientific progress or medical facts, defensive medicine finds its way to the detriment of society as a whole. In many other cases, fearful inexplicable attitudes of the doctors involved result in a transfer of exclusively medical decisions to the courts of law. This attitude contributes to the dismantling of a profession such as medicine, which is already subject to the difficult context of a variety of health systems that fail to sufficiently comply with their obligation of taking care of a community that needs and supports them.

Keywords : Medicine and law; Defensive medicine.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )