MEDICAL negligence claims seem to be all the rage at the moment, three leading health officials said yesterday.
The Head of Limassol Hospital, Dr. Andreas Petevis, told the Cyprus Mail that it has definitely become fashionable to cry foul in recent weeks.
“A patient becomes better and everyone says God made him better, but when a patient dies, the doctor killed him,” he said.
Petevis said mistakes were made in medicine, but that was par for the course for all forms of human activity particularly when it involved peoples’ professional lives.
“Individuals that work hard make mistakes,” he said. “It’s the ones that don’t work that never err.
“We are not infallible. Mistakes do happen and misdiagnoses do exist, but that does not make it medical negligence,” he said. “The crime is when someone deliberately makes a mistake,” something he could not believe doctors were capable of.
Health Minister Frixos Savvides also agreed that doctors were human and could make mistakes.
“We are not investigating whether or not doctors are being negligent in the performance of their duties. That is for a coroner to decide. What we can decide, as public servants, is whether they showed due care and attention about an incident,” he said.
Savvides admitted that reports in the press recently had spurred a lot of cries from people who claimed their relatives had suffered the same treatment.
“But we are dealing with this phenomenon calmly,” he said, “and are evaluating every circumstance that comes our way so that we can decide whether or not it warrants an investigation.”
He said hospitals were getting very bad press in recent weeks and could understand if the public was being put off going to hospital.
“Unfortunately, this is something we cannot avoid. This whole fiasco was created by the media because it placed so much emphasis on every single medical negligence claim,” Savvides said.
The president of the Medical Disciplinary Board President, Dr. Christodoulos Messis, agreed that all the bad press was a gross generalisation of state doctors and was completely unfair.
He too said it appeared to be “fashionable” to criticise hospital doctors and claim they were not doing their jobs properly.
“Obviously this is wrong,” he said. “If people have evidence of medical negligence then of course they should bring it forward, but without first making gross generalisations and stating all doctors are not doing their jobs properly.”
As for allegations that doctors do not care about their patients, Messis said this happened worldwide.
“Obviously in every profession there is a minority who might not be doing their job properly, but in Cyprus I’m sure the majority is doing a good job,” he said.
Limassol hospital chief Petevis agreed with his colleague’s sentiments.
“We are involved in a difficult profession as it’s made up of numerous illnesses and conflicting symptoms and something can be missed or misdiagnosed,” he said.
“For instance, every patient, for the same ailment, reacts differently or the illness itself manifests itself differently. As we say in the medical world, there are patients but not illnesses. In other words, every individual is different and his or her response to being sick could be different. You, for instance, might have tonsillitis and stay in bed for 10 days, whereas I could have it and feel fine going about my work, and be better in three days.”
He said this was down to a number of different factors, including a person’s psychological make up and how they handled illnesses.
Misdiagnosis might exist, but that did not make it medical negligence, nor can it be taken as a deliberate mistake, he said.
But mistakes can have consequences, explained Disciplinary Board President Messis. He said medical negligence cases were a penal offence and assessed by courts of law.
“It has nothing to do with us. When someone feels they have been maltreated, they approach a lawyer and sue the doctor in question. From that point on, the only authority to determine whether or not medical negligence has been committed is a civil court.
“There is also a chance that something will go wrong, even though the doctor may have done the best he could under the circumstances,” he said, adding that this was what the courts examined.
“The courts usually decide whether a doctor has done whatever he could for a particular case, using all available practical means. If he did that and then something went wrong, then it’s not his responsibility. But if he did less than he should have done, then there is a matter of negligence,” he said, stressing that only a court had the final say.
“We only examine doctors’ unethical actions or behaviour towards patients or other colleagues,” said Messis.
However, he said the courts could not have a doctor struck off.
“This is something we can do if a doctor has been found guilty of serious negligence or if unethical behaviour was involved. The government also has the right to ask the medical council – a body that registers doctors – to suspend a doctor from practicing either temporarily or permanently depending on the case.”
But, despite the fact that charges can be pressed against doctors, they themselves have nowhere to turn to, said Limassol’s Petevis.
“There is no organised body that protects doctors as far as I know, nor do we receive insurance coverage the way doctors in other countries do,” he said, adding that it was something local medical organisations should probably be examining with respect to the escalating negligence claims being aimed at their profession.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
