The field of Medicine has advanced enormously. Nevertheless medical errors are on the rise, and the process countries use to deal with these problems varies according to a country’s level of development, its judicial system and the organs of the state.
In Holland the courts recently ruled that an ob-gyn should shoulder the cost of raising a baby conceived because she failed properly to implant a contraceptive in the upper part of the mother’s arm, which didn’t prevent the pregnancy.
This news confirms that most European countries deal very firmly with medical errors. They realize that they are different from any other errors because they directly affect human lives. They can lead to disability or, in extreme cases, to the death of the patient. In the Kingdom medical errors are frequent — only some of them find their way into the newspapers, while many others are suppressed in both government and private hospital corridors or the files of the Ministry of Health.
And if we do hear of these errors, we rarely hear of the consequences that befall those who committed them. We are told instead that further investigation is under way — much in the way that the reports of the missiles falling by mistake on civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq are “under investigation”. With time interest in them wanes or we are distracted with something else — the investigations melt away and it is as though nothing had happened.
I don’t claim full knowledge of what goes on in the case of medical mistakes or the complaints that patients raise to the Ministry of Health, but I am convinced that these cases are never dealt with properly. I have yet to hear of a case where compensation was ordered for a patient or a doctor punished for the error he had made. Instead we read of foreign doctors who are deported as a result of errors they committed. This is in reality less a punishment than the doctor’s own decision.
The recklessness of doctors, and their habit of taking advantage of the high esteem in which they are held must be curbed. They must be publicly namedand prevented from practicing medicine for life in any country in the world. The harsher and more firm the punishment the more difficult it will be for doctors to put too little value on the lives of others, and it will encourage others to be more cautious before making a decision. This was the case with the conjoined Iranian twins whose death was announced in the international press.
The death proves the German doctor’s wisdom in refusing to perform the dangerous operation to separate the twins — despite their agreement to bear full responsibility for all eventualities — saying it was tantamount to suicide. But another doctor meanwhile saw in this an opportunity to achieve world fame if the operation succeeded. If something went wrong, the girls bore all the responsibility and he had merely answered their desire to commit suicide.
The practice of medicine means safeguarding life even if that means saying “No” or “I don’t know” or “I can’t.” It does not mean sacrificing the life of others to enhance one’s status or further one’s career.
What is perhaps most problematic about medical errors in the Kingdom is the absence of any authority for medical review — a board that is qualified and neutral to examine the cases and report on whether a certain case should be brought before a court of law which decides on compensation. Or it could decide that the file should remain within the Ministry of Health, which in turn decides how to punish the doctor. Until that happens many medical errors remain crimes without punishment.
