Criminal-legal and expert-criminalistic aspects of evaluating professional violations medical workers

Abstract

The objective reasons for which there are difficulties in the legal and forensic expert assessment of the correctness, completeness and timeliness of the provision of medical care are considered: 1) disordered regulatory framework governing medical activities; 2) insufficient number of specialists narrowly focused on medical law; 3) the need for a retrospective legal and expert assessment of events; 4) the existence of various approaches to the provision of medical care and assessing its impact on outcome both among forensic experts and among experts and lawyers. Statistical data are provided, indicating an increase in the number of «medical cases» over the past 15 years, significant regional differences in the number of criminal cases initiated and the outcome of their investigation. It is shown that the uniformities of medical activity (orders and standards), although they formalize medical activity and the possibility of evaluating its results, at the same time create prerequisites for substituting substantive for formal arguments for the conclusions of forensic experts. The most common shortcomings made by investigators and representatives of the judiciary conducting «medical cases» are systematized. Possible ways to overcome the considered shortcomings (regulatory, organizational, scientific, methodological) are presented. Considering global trends, an opinion was expressed on the need for a fundamental change in the approach to assessing the results of the relationship between a doctor and a patient - this problem is to a greater extent not a criminal law problem, but a civil law one and should be solved at the level of insurance companies, mediators and arbitration courts.