Awareness of medico-legal issues among newly joined post graduate residents

Abstract

Medico legal issues are the matters faced by the medical professional in their day to day practice involving legal aid. It involves issues related to medicolegal cases, consent, negligence and issuance of certificates. Many medical professionals are apprehensive about dealing with these issues due to fear of legal enquiry by law enforcing agencies at any time. Hence, it is considered as one of the road block in the medical profession. All medical professionals must be aware and clear about medicolegal perspectives pertaining to their field, throughout their carrier from the day one of their profession. Once the doctors become specialists their medicolegal responsibility also increases by many fold. The study of awareness about the medico legal issues was carried out among newly joined 84 post-graduate residents (both clinical and non-clinical) to assess their knowledge at entry level. Among of these 29 were pre and para clinicalresidents and 55 were clinical residents. Only 46.43% residents knew that MLC can be initiated at any time, 69.04% knew that victims of rape can be examined by any registered medical practitioner, and 98.81% residents were clear about consent as per Sec. 90 IPC. Hence, it is required to freshen up the basic medicolegal knowledge of the doctors at entry level. Even though it has been mentioned in MCI post graduation medical education regulation that there shall be training in applied aspects of the subject and there shall be training in allied subjects related to the disciplines concerned,the specific mention about training in medicolegal cases and medical jurisprudenceis also essential. Keywords: Awareness, Medico legal issues, Medico legal cases, Consent, PG residents, Basic medical science.