Feb 16, 2008

Adventures in Jurisprudence

When all else fails, use the "blame the dead guy" defense! I didn't kill the patient despite filling his IV line with chicken fat. The recently-dead doctor who wasn't even on call at the time did it. Can I go now?

Jurisprudence is the short course in how to not get sued. There's some pretty cool case studies, but most of it boils down to "As a doctor, try not to do anything mindblowingly stupid". Nice in that it implies testable material that isn't too difficult. Not nice in that the case studies demonstrate that you actually have to *tell* medical students NOT to twist around the head of a dying guy in front of his wife so that you can take pictures for research while aforementioned dying guy is expressly telling you to stop, otherwise, when they're surgeons, they're going to end up contributing to rising legal costs.

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