Professional Liability and Medical Malpractice

Running head: PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
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PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
General Liability of Physicians
General liability is a must have insurance for all small business and if a doctor has his
or her own business in their offices then insurance is mandatory in order make patients safe
and secure. General Liability insurance includes premised liability, products liability and
complete operations (USA Business Insurance, 2018). Premises liability insurance belongs
to commercial general liability insurance. It takes care of the service users’ interest. For
example, if a patient is injured in an automobile accident and have visited the doctors’ clinic
for treatment then the premises liability will pay for the costs which will be incurred in order
to receive the medical treatment. This coverage is also applicable for property damage (USA
Business Insurance, 2018). Products liability is applicable if the physicians also sell
medicines. If a patient is harmed or injured after consuming or using the medical products
purchases from the clinic of the concerned physicians and damage cost will be payable under
the products liability (USA Business Insurance, 2018). Completed operations coverage
protects the office of the physicians from the lawsuits that mainly arise after the doctors have
complete services or any medical operations on the patients. Completed operations insurance
refunds for the litigation expenses, settlements and damages (USA Business Insurance,
2018).
Reasonable Person Standard
Reasonable Person Standard is a critical test that is used to state the legal duty in order
to safeguard one’s own interest or other associated with that interest. The standard demands a
person to act with the equal degree of knowledge, care, experience, fair mindedness and
complete awareness about the prevailing law, which the community would expect out of
certain hypothetical yet reasonable person. In relation to bioethics, under reasonable person
standard, a patient will be informed about the material risk associated that would influence a

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PROFESSIONAL LIABILITY AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
reasonable person in selecting whether to provide informed consent in the treatment (Man,
2013).
The Standard Care
The concept of "the standard of care" is popular among the healthcare professionals
and the legal definition of the standard of care is guided by clinical practice guidelines. The
applicable standard of care under medical malpractice lawsuits differs among the
jurisdictions in the United States. The locality rule requires defendant physicians to deliver
same level of skills and care that is required by the other doctors practicing in the same or
similar community. This lawsuit mainly places a defined geographical dimension over the
prevailing professional standard of care in the medical negligence litigation (Moffett &
Moore, 2011).
Duty of Care
Physicians have a legal responsibility to deliver standard care with skills to their
patients. The lawful duty of care is generated when the physicians agrees to treat the patients
who have availed his or her medical services. While determining what duty of care the said
patients require, the physicians should take into consideration whether the care they are
providing is what the "reasonable physician" would deliver under the similar circumstances.
It is important that a healthcare specialists exercise a higher level of skill in the domain of
their expertise (Davies & Shaul, 2010).
Responsibilities of healthcare practitioners
Confidentiality in healthcare generally refers to the obligation of the healthcare
practitioners who have adequate access to the patient's personal or health-related records in
order to hold that information in confidence. This complete professional obligation to secure