Criminal judgments to medical malpractice in Taiwan

Abstract

Our society is the only country that punishes physicians with medical malpractice by using criminal law as a routine, while most countries in this planet settle almost all medical disputes with civil action. In Taiwan, criminal suits account 79% of all medical malpractice law suits. The purpose of this trial is to investigate the reasons for the overruled criminal judgment by empirical approach. In this study, 15 overruled judgments out of 615 criminal prosecutions were collected from February 1st, 2002 to January 31st, 2005. The judgments of these cases are analyzed by using “the content analytic method”. It is found that in these 15 criminal prosecutions, 16 doctors out of 18 defendants lost their trials, which indicates, statistically, one doctor was sentenced to be guilty per every 3 months. Out of these unlucky ones, two-thirds of the criminals were surgeons, one-fifth internists, and the rests are gynecologists and pediatricians. The average of the terms of imprisonment was 6.6 months and, fortunately, all of them obtained probation or replacement with forfeit. In these cases, most of the doctors came from local hospitals or clinics, while only two were from the medical centers. Concerning the disputes, five cases were involved with delayed or missed diagnoses of the illness and the other ten in the surgical complications. In the first 4 years of the 21st century, there was one physician in Taiwan sentenced guilty per every 3 months, which is a unique phenomenon in the world. The criminal rate of physicians in Taiwan is the highest in all professionals in the world. Most of these criminal doctors were the laborious, mind-dependent, life-saving surgeons, internists, pediatricians, and gynecologists. According to the causes of the disputes, the difference between the expectation of the doctors and that of the patients should be treated by informed consent doctrine to avoid the very expensive defensive medicine.