Medical law Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Medical law - Essay Example Therefore a breach of duty has also occurred and what this means is that the expressed or implied contract between this doctor and patient has been violated (Brooten 1987, p. 1). For example when Dr. Evil failed to read any of the instructions about the medication that he prescribed to the patient he violated the contract of duty between himself and the patient. This shows extreme negligence on his part and the tort law that covers this area would define this as being valid and providing burden of proof. Due to the fact that negligence has become such a profound problem within the field of medicine in the UK in the past decade the tort laws have become very strict on the specific care of patients as well. Therefore, in today’s society, it is found that the GP’s duty is fundamentally suppose to provide reasonable and dignified care, skill and judgement in the basic practice of his or her profession and when negligence does appear then they are suppose to take full responsibility for the adverse outcomes placed onto the patient in their care. Dr. Evil will thereby have to answer for wrongfully not following the guidelines that were implied in the drug combination he gave to his patient. This case is somewhat similar to Adderly v. Bremner which defined the GP in this case as being negligent in not having changed syringes to vaccinate 38 patients. What occurred instead was the GP used one main needle for every two patients which promoted the idea of liability onto this GP. This is due to the fact that some of the patients were infected with septicaemia (blood poisoning) due to this judgemental error by the attending GP. It also defines the fact that the GP did not provide the required standard of care that was expected of him by the patients. In retrospect it would seem that any reasonable GP would have in fact changed the syringes after each patient to avoid the adverse consequences which