The Standard of Care Was Breached

I read this article at Yahoo about a woman who had a 6.7 inch pair of scissors left in her abdomen after surgery, and it provided yet another concrete example of how flawed the current system is for bringing a medical malpractice suit.

If this had happened in Texas, this woman would have had to have hired a physician as an expert witness, and that physician's report would have had to establish the following in order for her to recover any money:

1: That the acceptable standard of care in her operation does not allow scissors to be left in a patient.

2: That by leaving scissors in the woman, her doctor breached the standard of care.

3: That the breach of the standard of care is the proximate cause of her injuries.

Every year, legislatures pass laws that make it harder and harder to bring successful malpractice suits. While those laws help weed out suits without merit, they also raise the costs necessary to sue a doctor who leaves scissors in your stomach.

This incident was in Australia, and I don't know what the med mal laws are there. I would say that the severity of the laws there is in inverse proportion to how much money the insurance industry contributes to Australian politicians. Read the article if for no other reason than to see the X-ray and wonder just how any doctor missed this.