Legal Issues in Medicine

Legal Issues in Medicine: An International Approach examines the laws, regulations, and ethical principles that govern medical practice globally. It begins by surveying the medicolegal scenario country by country, comparing negligence systems in some forty to fifty nations worldwide—a depth and scope few medicolegal texts attempt. Written by the editor of Anil Aggrawal's Internet Journal of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology and drawing on forty-five years of testimony in courts, commissions, tribunals, and arbitrations, the book is encyclopedic in scope and fully referenced throughout.

Designed and intended as a working reference, the book features approximately 125 case studies drawn from all six inhabited continents. Every case study concludes with take-home lessons—what the doctor, nurse, pharmacist, or hospital should take away, and noting whether the defendants were or were not held liable. Every specialty chapter sets out the legal issues unique and specific to that field, including helpful do’s and don't’s for practitioners. Readers learn how to avoid common pitfalls including failure to diagnose, breach of confidentiality, absent informed consent, and poor documentation.

The chapters span fifty specialties – from allergy to urology - , covering such relevant topics as cardiology, emergency medicine, genomic medicine, HIV/AIDS, medical records, minimal access surgery, nephrology, occupational medicine, ophthalmology, pain medicine, pathology, radiology, respiratory medicine, sexual medicine, surgery, telemedicine, toxicology, transplant medicine, and procedures of all kinds. A final chapter addresses less-discussed subjects such as biobanks, travel medicine, game theory in medical law, prescription digital therapeutics, regenerative medicine, and toxic mold litigation.

The appendices include a glossary of over 170 legal terms, a guide to reading legal citations that assumes no prior legal knowledge, and the author's own laws of medicolegal practice reinforced by cases from his extensive personal experience. Legal Issues in Medicine serves as an essential, comprehensive resource for medical libraries, physicians, surgeons, nurses, pharmacists, forensic pathologists and toxicologists, hospital administrators, review boards, attorneys, and judges throughout the world.