Syracuse Personal Injury Law Blog
Most fields are always changing, and medicine is no different. What is changing within medicine, however, is not necessarily techniques and skills that will reduce serious medical errors or fatal hospital negligence. Instead, it is often finding new medicines or new ways of performing procedures. Yet many of the problems of medical malpractice remain.
So, what could get the medical community to change? There are some people who believe that hospitals, physicians and other medical professionals would be more likely to delve into safety issues if they were subject to more high-publicity, costly malpractice lawsuits. There is even historical evidence that backs this presumption up.
In the early 1980s, anesthesiologists were getting slammed by a series of medical malpractice lawsuits. Time and time again they were found liable for serious medical errors, so the American Society of Anesthesiologists looked into what had been harming patients. After making some changes to working hours and monitoring, updated machines, and created safety devices, anesthesiologists have seen a tremendous increase in safety.