When patients are injured by medical negligence, the remedies they can pursue depend upon the country’s legal system. In the United States, for example, lawsuits against physicians for negligent injury are not considered unusual.

Malpractice, or professional negligence, is the failure of a health care provider (for example, a physician, dentist, nurse, or pharmacist) to exercise the ordinary care and skill a reasonably prudent, qualified person would exercise under the same or similar circumstances. The practitioner does not guarantee the outcome but must use diligence and ordinary skill in the treatment of a patient.

A valid malpractice claim must have four elements: duty, breach, damages, and causation. The plaintiff must prove each of these elements by a preponderance of evidence (more likely than not to be true). The practitioner must be shown to have a relationship to the patient (which establishes a duty to exercise ordinary care), must have breached that duty (as measured by the applicable standard of care), and through the breach must have caused the patient physical and monetary damages.

The central concern for physicians is usually to establish the standard of care through expert testimony, which may simply be the testimony of another qualified physician. Such testimony is necessary because the standard of medical practice is not something a lay jury is familiar with. Expert witnesses may themselves rely on the standards that have been set down by one or more medical speciality organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. These medical speciality organizations provide certification to physicians who have fulfilled postgraduate training and practice requirements in the speciality. Medical specialty organizations maintain the standards necessary to practice in the specialities and provide reasonable assurance to patients that these standards will be upheld. Nonconformance with such standards by a specialist is evidence of negligence, although it is not conclusively negligence (the practitioner may have a valid excuse for not following custom, such as an emergency situation or lack of equipment). Conformance with the standards is evidence of due care, but it is not conclusive because other factors may have caused the physician’s action to be imprudent under the circumstances.

If a practitioner consistently performs below the profession’s standard of care (i.e., the practitioner is a negligent physician who does not actually harm anyone) the remedy is not a malpractice action but a complaint to the licensing or registration authority to have the individual disciplined. Disciplinary action by public licensing authorities, however, is unusual.

Medical malpractice actions have three basic functions: quality control, compensation for harm, and emotional vindication, all of which are achieved to varying degrees. Quality control is probably best achieved, since the standard of care is set by physicians themselves and enforced by patients and juries. Compensation for harm is greatly skewed toward major injuries. Attorneys in the United States, for example, represent malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis—i.e., they are paid a proportion (usually 20–40 percent) of the total amount awarded to the plaintiff. Patients who suffer less severe injuries may have little redress for compensation. In countries that have a system of national health insurance, compensation for harm may not be a major issue (since all medical bills are paid regardless of cause). However, litigation is usually necessary to obtain compensation for noneconomic damages, usually referred to as “pain and suffering,” which essentially means the impact the injury has on the patient’s life. Countries with comprehensive social services for all citizens, like Sweden and New Zealand, have effectively developed “no fault” compensation systems. But in the United States, where more than 40 million people do not have any form of health care insurance, lack of coverage can transform a medically induced injury into a financial catastrophe.

Emotional vindication is a measure of the consumer’s ability to make a complaint as well as to get a satisfactory response. A comparison in consumer complaints between the United States and Britain indicates that U.S. citizens file claims against physicians more than 10 times as often as their British counterparts. American law professor Frances Miller noted that many cultural and practical reasons serve to explain this difference, including different legal systems and rules, access to attorneys and courts, the method of paying for medical expenses, the special status of the National Health Service in Britain, and the existence of alternative complaint procedures.

Perhaps the most important development in quality assurance is the growing patient safety movement—a movement based on the U.S. Institute of Medicine’s finding that more than 100,000 patients a year lose their lives in U.S. hospitals. Most of these deaths are due to negligent actions of health care providers and can be dramatically reduced by simple preventative measures, including routine hand washing, use of electronic medical records, and careful identification of individual patients and their conditions.