Evaluation of the medical malpractice cases concluded in the General Assembly of Council of Forensic Medicine.

BACKGROUND: Malpractice is an occasion that occurs due to defective treatment in the course of providing health services. Neither all of the errors within the medical practices are medical malpractices, nor all of the medical malpractices result in harm and judicial process. Injuries occurring at the time of treatment process may result from a complication or medical malpractice. This study aims to evaluate the reports of the controversial cases brought to trial with the claim of medical malpractice, compiled by The Council of Forensic Medicine.

METHODS: Our study includes all of the cases brought to the Ministry of Justice, Council of Forensic Medicine General Assembly with the claim of medical malpractice within a period of 11 years between 2000 and 2011 (n=330).

RESULTS: In our study, we saw that 33.3% of the 330 cases were detected as "medical malpractice" by the General assembly. Within this 33.3% segment cases, 14.2% of them resulted from treatment errors such as wrong or incomplete treatment and surgery, use of wrong medication, running late for a true diagnosis after necessary examination, inappropriate medical processes as well as applied treatment having causality with an emergent injury to the patient. 9.7% of them emerged from diagnosis errors like failure to diagnose, wrong diagnosis, lack of consultation request, lack of transfer to a top centre, lack of intervention resulting from not recognizing the postoperative complication on time. 8.8% of them occurred because of careless intervention such as lack of necessary care and attention, lack of post operation follow-ups, lack of essential informing, absenteeism when called for a patient, intervention under suboptimal conditions. Whereas 0.3% of them developed from errors due to inexperience, 0.3% of them were detected to have occurred because of the administrative mistakes following malfunction of healthcare system.

CONCLUSION: It is very important to analyze the errors properly in order to get the medical malpractice under control. Going through the errors, on which process of health service they occur and their owners; keeping the record of all examinations and treatments in the course of health service regularly and properly will be a cornerstone for both occupational and forensic medicine practices to be standardized.