In a previous post I mentioned that over half of all US physicians will be sued for malpractice at some point in their career, accused of committing what is defined as “injury” as a result of substandard or negligent treatment. When attempting to define what constitutes malpractice in cancer care, however, the task is complicated by the injuries from the disease itself, not to mention the unavoidable toxicities from the drugs used in good faith to help the patient. If I tell someone that she probably won’t lose her hair from chemotherapy and she does lose it, have I failed her? If I treat two patients with identical diagnoses and one lives 3 months and the other 3 years, is this inconsistency a mark of inferior care? There is no way to soften the fact that even with superb care, when cancer itself delivers suffering and death it establishes the sine qua non of a legal injury-an adverse outcome. Oncologists therefore practice on high alert, and wise are those who have learned to heed cancer’s appetite for cruelty and its reckless, indiscriminate ability to kill. Combined with the well-documented various and ugly side effects of treatment (without which the chance of remission is, short of a miracle, nil), how do we satisfy the standard of care when our patients are already at high risk for injury? Hey, every goody two-shoes knows the answer to that question: be kind and compassionate, yada, yada, yada. Let’s reverse the scenario and reveal 15 highly effective habits that, in the face of a bad outcome, inspire patients to give a personal injury lawyer your address.
