Legal Medicine: The specialty that brings together health professionals
Legal Medicine aims to apply medical knowledge in the legal field, standing out for its ability to provide a broad, complementary and essential vision for doctors, regardless of the work they carry out and the field in which they practice.
The specialty has always been characterized by having a very varied demand. Although it has usually been chosen by doctors from different clinical or surgical branches who wish to expand their work universe to provide expertise, in recent years there has been a growing interest in doctors with a few years of graduation, with different motivations.
According to a publication by the Association of Municipal Doctors of the City of Buenos Aires, in the last 5 years, demands on health professionals and the institutions or entities where they work have increased by 20%. The statistics warn of a problem linked to two central issues: the increase in claims (mediations and trials) and their amounts (million-dollar convictions). In Argentina, 1 in 4 doctors in the course of their working life received a lawsuit for malpractice. And every year, lawsuits for 1,000 million pesos are filed against social works, insurance and the State. Meanwhile, the amounts of sentences increased more than 500%.
Asked about which specialties receive the most demands and the impact on professionals who are going through a legal situation, Dr. Roberto Foyo, Legal Physician, Director of the Specialization in Legal Medicine at the Barceló Foundation, commented: “Although surgery plastic surgery for aesthetic purposes, traumatology and bariatric surgery are the specialties with the highest number of complaints, there is no medical specialty that is left out of these actions, in the face of which it is essential that the doctor develops his activity within the framework of safety “which provides you with actions based on guides, protocols, lexartis, with careful monitoring and meticulous preparation of the medical documentation that will support your actions.”
Although only 6% of the lawsuits reach a conviction, it is still a stressful situation and often defines changes in professional activity, in the specialty and even in the cessation of performance in the medical field.
“From the moment we become aware of a medication filed by the patient and/or his family, an interrupted series of impacts and consequences begins (inherent expenses in terms of lawyers, expertise, uncertainties, impact on professional practice and on the relationship with other patients) all of which leads, even when reaching an acquittal result, to a permanent imprint on the doctor’s spirit,” concluded Dr. Foyo.
