Review Question - QID 217612

This scenario, featuring a patient who suffered an adverse event due to deliberate and improper medical treatment by a provider against the recommendations of more senior team members, is an example of medical malpractice.

Medical malpractice describes improper, reckless, or illegal activity by a medical practitioner that results in patient harm. In most cases, malpractice represents a deliberate action against sound medical practice and evidence-driven medical treatment principles. The malpractice may occur either due to an active desire to harm the patient or due to grossly deviant practices from the norms of other providers within that discipline. Malpractice claims must demonstrate that an error occurred that resulted in actual patient harm and that the behavior of the provider was unreasonable and directly resulted in the harm.

Rodziewicz et al. present a review article on the types of medical errors and harm that can occur to patients. They discuss how most inpatient malpractice claims are due to surgical errors and how most outpatient malpractice claims are due to missed or late diagnoses.

Incorrect Answers:
Answer 2: A near miss is defined as any error or event that could have resulted in an adverse event occurring to a patient but did not actually cause harm. In this case, the patient was harmed by the improper actions of this provider.

Answer 3: Negligence describes the failure of a healthcare provider to meet the standard of care provided by an average qualified provider. In this case, the provider was actively placing orders and providing care that went against recommendations. Negligence would be more consistent with a scenario in which the provider meant to stop IV fluids but forgot because they became distracted.

Answer 4: Non-preventable adverse events are harms that occur to patients despite adherence to the best available treatment evidence. In this case, harm occurred to the patient because of improper medical practice.

Answer 5: Preventable adverse events describe harm that occurs to patients as a result of healthcare interventions due to sub-optimal practice. While sub-optimal practice was performed in this case, the harm was due to grossly improper care outside the bounds of reasonable medical practice.

Bullet Summary:
Medical malpractice describes improper, reckless, or illegal activity by a medical practitioner that results in patient harm.