Indian Supreme Court gives doctors leeway in cases of 'medical negligence'

Hearty thanks and namaskars to indian apex court judiciary :
The Indian Supreme Court has given doctors and surgeons in the country leeway in cases of 'medical negligence' as surgical operations involved uncalculated risks.
The apex court by this has made it even more difficult to start criminal proceedings against doctors for treatment gone awry even in cases involving death of patients.
A two-member bench of the apex court had ruled on Wednesday -10-2-10 said: “It would not be conducive to the efficiency of the medical profession if a doctor is to administer medicine with a halter around his neck,” said Justices Dalveer Bhandari and H S Bedi.
The bench also proclaims -
“Medicine is not an exact science involving precision and every surgical operation involves uncalculated risks”.
“A medical practitioner is not expected to achieve success in every case that he treats. The duty of the doctor like that of other professional men is to exercise reasonable skill and care. The test is the standard of the ordinary skilled man,” the court ruled.
Noting that doctors inevitably become the first human casualty for patients or their families dejected by an unsuccessful course of treatment, the bench said that “a surgeon with shaky hands under fear of legal action cannot perform a successful operation and a quivering physician cannot administer the end-dose of medicine to his patient”.

“Negligence in the context of medical profession necessarily calls for a treatment with a difference. A simple lack of care, an error of judgement or an accident, is not proof of negligence on the part of a medical professional.
Treatment skills differ from doctor to doctor,” the bench said. A medical professional, the bench clarified, cannot be hauled up on the criminal charge of medical negligence “so long as the doctor followed a practice acceptable to the medical profession of that day”.
To prosecute a medical professional for criminal negligence “it must be shown that the accused doctor did something or failed to do something which in the given facts and circumstances no medical professional in his ordinary senses and prudence would have done or failed to do”.

As long as the doctors have performed their duties and exercised an ordinary degree of professional skill and competence, they cannot be held guilty of medical negligence.”
the objective of their judgment, the bench wrote in the verdict today, is to ensure that it is imperative that “doctors must be able to perform their professional duties with a free mind”.

IN THIS CONTEXT I WOULD LIKE TO REMEMBER THE LAST YEARS APEX COURT JUDGMENT -----

The Supreme Court in its judgement on February 17 held that the police cannot arrest doctors over complaints of medical negligence and courts, including consumer fora, cannot issue notice to them for alleged medical negligence without prima facie evidence.