Type 1 and 2 errors of courts deciding in medical malpractice trials a¤ect the physicians’provision of care. The paper at hand uses a principal-agent model to explain why uncertain liability prospects induce a welfare reducing separated equilibrium where altruistic physicians practice defensive medicine and sel…sh physicians act negligently. By minimizing the loss of welfare, it identi…es an op...

When the body becomes target of its own defensive arsenal, medicine must step in.

Recent debates about redress mechanisms for medical accident victims have been sidetracked by fears of an American-style medical malpractice crisis. What is required is a framework within which the debate can resume. This paper proposes such a framework by focusing on the compensation and deterrence objectives and placing them in the wider context of the social costs of providing medical servic...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Increased demand for non-invasive cosmetic laser procedures has led to an increase in the use of physician extenders (PE). This demand has now led to a variety of medical legal concerns surrounding the use of lasers by non-physician PE. STUDY DESIGN This review looks at the evolution of the relationship between physicians and the various types of PE. The focus of the ...

From a litigation perspective, neurosurgery is considered a 'super high-risk' field, and this has been associated with rapidly increasing malpractice cover costs. In 2013 the annual Medical Protection Society fee for cover was R250,900. We wished to determine whether high malpractice cover was influencing how neurosurgeons managed patients. A 40-question online survey asking questions on defens...

BACKGROUND Obstetrics and gynaecology always has reputation for being a highly litigious. The field of obstetrics and gynaecology is surrounded by different circumstances that stimulate the doctors to practice defensive medicine. METHODS This study was directed to assess the extent and the possible effect of defensive medicine phenomenon (in term of knowledge and prevalence) on medical decisi...

To trust someone is to have expectations of their behaviour; distrust often involves disappointed expectations. But healthy trust and distrust require a good understanding of which expectations are reasonable, and which are not. In this paper, I discuss the limits of trustworthiness by drawing on recent studies of trust in the context of defensive medicine, biobanking and cardiopulmonary resusc...

The purpose of this study was to compare normative data from present Division I National Collegiate Athletic Association football teams to those from 1987. Players were divided into 8 positions for comparisons: quarterbacks (QB), running backs (RB), receivers (WR), tight ends (TE), offensive linemen (OL), defensive linemen (DL), linebackers (LB), and defensive backs (DB). Comparisons included h...