‘Patients can sue hospitals for negligence’

Patients not satisfied with the services rendered by medical personnel can seek redress in the law courts, former Attorney General and Justice Minister Alhaji Abdullahi Ibrahim (SAN) has said.

Speaking at a workshop on medico-legal practice in health institutions in Nigeria, the former minister said though the medical profession is governed by rules and regulations, most doctors are at lost at how to behave under the law.

He said patients must know that they have a right to sue a hospital if they believe that they were not treated fairly of have incurred untold damages.

“The practitioners of medicine (health care givers) are exercising a great task and function. Medicine and its practice are matters of life and death. Where a duty exists, there must be responsibility. It is thus imperative that there must be some ascertainable degree of responsibility expected of the practitioners of medicine,” he said.

He said all medical personnel know what to do when a patient is before them, “but what they may not know fully is what their duties are under the law.”

In his keynote address, Ibrahim said it is not correct for anyone to suggest that medical practitioners or healthcare givers are on their own, they are heavily regulated by the Medical and Dental Practitioners’ Tribunal.

He therefore said the hospital is responsible for the negligence of the medical practitioners if anything goes wrong.

Chairman of the National Hospital board Pharm.

Hamza Sakwa said the workshop is aimed at “sensitizing participants on their medico-legal responsibilities to their esteemed patients in healthcare institutions.”

http://news.onlinenigeria.com/templates/?a=11211&z=12

if they've been doing that, about 90% of nigerian hospitals would have gone under by now. problem is, our legal system is crap and most people are ignorant anyways.

This is news to me.

Na 2day?

This shouldn't be news but in a system where people think they are been done a favour when treated at the hospital, i think it is a welcomed idea that people should be informed of their medico-legal rights. I think the attitude of doc. and other health worker in public health facilities and the idea that you are been done a favour should eventually be done away with. I hope a time will come and medical torts will become a viable aspect in law.

hopefully patients will ve time or may be the gut to sue any hospital for negligence, Nigerians dont take somethings serious they just let it go

This is a welcome development

This is going to be best thing ever to happen to medicine in Nigeria. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc could and should be held legally liable if they practice outside a set standard. That's how its done in the US for example. If you have a patient in diabetic coma, you have a standard set of medical interventions you must make, if instead of giving IV fluids for example, you resort to chanting incantations, you ought to be put out of business forever.

I really hope it is a welcome development. Downside is that it would mean cost of care would reach the high heavens as practitioners begin to practice defensively: send you to do a myraid of investigations necessary and otherwise to protect themselves from litigation,ofcourse the patient will also pay for the medical insurance (Medical Defense Union etc) which the caregivers will obtain to pay for litigation etc.
Is our system ready for this?
I'll rather suggest other measures while not condoning malpractice: such as each professional association ensuring that the ethics of practice is upheld, instituting continuing medical education (CME), Postgraduate specialization should become compulsory for every qualified doctor,nurse etc as is the case in the USA,Britain and other developed countries, procedures should only be done by those specifically trained formally to do them and up to a certain level of competence. A situation where a newly qualified doctor is expected to do an appendicectomy is not acceptable, even a post fellowship doctor not trained in Surgery is not allowed to do this. In many of our general hospitals even qualified Surgeons are expected to be able to do every type of surgery eg an Orthopaedic Surgeon is aked to carry out a prostate gland removal which he has no training for. The practice of allowing general duty medical officers who have acquired "experience" to carry out surgeries or procedures on patients without any formal training is very wrong.
I have many more suggestions,but let me take a break before my post becomes too long

This could be good,but one should just pray for no complications. Even in the US, hospitals have a way of protecting themselves from litigation. Just to take XRay, they make you sign at least 5 different forms including one to designate who decides when plug would be pulled if you are unable to decide, if you did not designate one, you automatically told them to do what they like. lol.

Another problem is the level of poverty and ignorance with illiteracy. Someone who regards everything the medical personnel does as divine may never know when to sue.   Someone who barely has enough to pay medical bill would not get to engage lawyers to push a case.

Hi Remii, with time some desperate lawyers will offer their services for free or a percentage of the money for compensation and encourage patients to institute legal proceedings. The truth is that we have quite a lot of issues to resolve before this kind of policy will work well here. The facilities in our hospitals (99%) is grossly inadequate, the allocation to health is absymally low, even our top teaching hospitals cannot have uninterrupted power supply, UCH used to have problem getting water for many years. The list of inadequacies in the system can fill many pages and volumes of literary works. Is it in this kind of setting that you would want to enforce legal aspects of medicine?

If anyone sues in Nigeria
It'll be tossed out of the courtroom.

The cases will be considered on their merits if the arbiter is unbiased or unifluenced. A situation where in our avant garde hospitals patients have to go and buy syringes, gloves, sterile packs, and other mundane items (let us not mention instruments, life-saving machines, etc) which are generally not available how can anyone in his right mind begin to persecute even those working under such deplorable conditions?
There are millions of new techniques for doing certain procedures with modern equipment, which have become available as far back as the 70's and early eighties which are not available in Niger eg the procedure for uncomplicated appendicectomy is no longer open surgery but laparoscopic surgery and the patient can go home in a day or two and resume work in a few days thereafter, but this is still not available here.
The world has very honestly left us behind by light years

Can I sue a community clinic for N10M when they are not worth up to N2M?

Its not true that people's case would get thrown out of court. There a lines of cases on medical torts it just that its not as rampant as it in other legal systems because the differ from the dispute arising from normal commercial transactions and other torts.

There's always a toggle between Industry v labor, students v teachers, patients right v medical practioners. The secret of the US success lies in continously swinging the pendulum of balance from one end to the other, and mostly staying in the middle. Even at that it continues to undergo changes.
In Nigeria, the pedulum is permenently stuck on the side of the "medical practioners" Medical practioners in Nigeria includes everybody that could pose as a doctor, act like a doctor, and even charge like legitimate doctors. So, elimination or reduction in number of quack medical practioners will be the first casualty of some sort of legalized medical system, then the next victim will be doctors that refuse to update their knowledge base, etc.
The standard of medical practice in Nigeria doesn't need to meet NYC standards before these things are implemented, but you can't manage appendicits with surgery in Ibadan, then manage it with a sango in Akure, lots of prayers in Ondo, and then massage therapy in Enugu for example. That's almost criminal.

yawn

Yar'dua know this na im make am gentle go Soudi arabia

My story is this; doctors in ubth told my mum she has diabetes which is true. They didn't tell her that it was the type of low sugar, instead they said she should stop eating carbonhydate food( rice, eba, fufu, yam, amala made from yam.)

My mum began to emertiate and loosing strenght. We decide to take her to new york because my elder sister is a citizen. When she got there, the doctors said she's got no sugar in her and decide to buy her candies and chocolates. Believe me, I followed her to ubth oneday; the way the doctors reacted when I ask them about my mum's condition, tears rolled down my chicks.

The doctors in newyork said we brought her at the right time.
My mum was almost like a bag of bones,, jeeezzz!!!!

when u visit emergency ward,, u will find out that the doctors u see there are student doctors killing people at will

There's hardly anybody that doesn't have a heart wrenching story about our failed medical system in Nigeria.

i am a doctor in a govt hospital and i ve got nuthing to gain by mis leading u.this topic saddens my heart.1st things first ;have we addressed the working condition of drs and co.god knows how long i slept on examination couches etc.@ webgenius u re totally right;are we ready for this. @ jude sure udont have all details about ur mums condition and its management,dont take someone who's in this(health)for monetary gains only to be a saint. issue is :are the nigerian public ready for this,its gonna come wit lots of responsibility for both patient and health workers and believe me the nigerian (uninformed and ignorant public)will not be better for it judging from wat i see so far.peeps do not even know wat causes malaria

^^^^
@Chrome
Lucky you sleep at all, whether on a bench or in a call room, doctors work real hard all over the World. Personally, I still go 48-60 hours without sleep. If the system is not reformed as it is, the few good doctors like you who who hard would have their credit taken by the bad reputation of the bad doctors. Eventually, look at healthcare as a market where the customer patient is always right. It took us a long time to get this bad, and it will also take a lot to bring our system up to acceptable international standard.

The best option is self help.
the law takes 4eva and more pple'll keep dying, in btw, while the case is being adjourn ad infinitum . when the defaulting medics know and see how much they too stand to lose via avenging families of victims , they'll seat up . i assure u they will. i have seen this mosaic law formula work like magic .
it's just a pity this vicious cycle belief has to be adopted but . . .as they say , "drastic events demand drastic actions"

Pls sue o! Let someone even sue a General hospital in Lagos so that the hospitals themselves would start limiting activities that will give patients reason to sue like overcrowding at ERs and admitting on sit outs.

good luck with that
i still pray for my country nigeria

Well this will help weed out the bad ones. The ones that are really supposed to be butchers can now work at the meat shop. My cousin and another woman I know both came to the US to find that they were basically butchered by their so called doctors in Nigeria. My cousin who just turned 40 actually had to get a hysterectomy. Thank God she already has 3 kids. The other lady was so butchered up inside that she was even lucky that towards the end of her pregnancy she developed high blood pressure and had to be admitted in Chicago and the baby actually started coming out from the scar tissue of the earlier butchering she got in Nigeria. Had she not been on admission at the hospital she or the baby would never had made it. In both cases the doctors here said the could not believe how badly they were chopped up inside. Let us not talk about my distant cousin wife (27 year old young lady) who kept complaining that she could not feel the baby. Of course they sent her back home. It was not until she pus and blood started coming out of her ears, nose and basically every opening in her body did anybody do anything. The baby had basically died and got rotten inside her. She died. Unnessasary deaths. Doctors need to be held accountable

Hi Jude, how is your mum now? I think your mum has diabetes like you said or perharps let us say hyperglycaemia. This condition is never static, there are times when the blood sugar rises and times when it would fall to subnormal levels. It requires constant monitoring to be able to adjust the treatment accordingly. Dietary manipulation is a form of therapy as is the use of drugs, injections (insulin) and of course many new modalities some of which are still in clinical trials. She needs to be properly investigated to determine the cause of her hyperglycaemia which occasionally swings to hypoglycaemia, as other conditions may be responsible for this. I also hope she is not loosing weight anymore.

@ Post.
I think its a welcome development as it will make us more cautious when attending to our patients. Though , its going to make healthcare more expensive and with the level of poverty inj nigeria, people cant afford three square meals talkless of getting the money needed by Hungry Lawyers to sue the hospital for negligence. Also the state of our hospitals and remuneration is so bad that it is almost impossible for the doctors to give their best
I think the Govt should tackle these issues first and then the health practitioners can be held accountable if anything goes wrong.

At post, its high time medical practioners started get their ass sued in naija,

sueing hospitals is not the problem but getting justice.but come to think of it,tell me how many nigerians that can afford the legal fees.one tihing i have learnt in nigeria is that 'talkability is not workability'.

I must apologise to the doctors in the house if I have used a language that I am not suppose to use. Last two weeks; thursday to be precise I got a call from my cousin that her younger bro was dying, quickly I rush down to same ubth where he has been referred. The two doctors we met at the emergency ward could not diagnose a common ''tetanus''(dont mind my spelling). They had to go and call another doc who quickly told us to go and buy a certain injection. While they were attending to my little cousin, I was steering at a man on the bed accross the ward; he was struggling with his breath(he was an accident victim). I called the attention of the next doctor that the guy accross is dying. Instead of attending to the man they called the security to push me out and didnt do anything about him. The next minute my aunt came out and said the guy that I was pointing at has died.

, But I thank God that Terry my lovely little cousin came out alive

Why are my saying this; emergency ward is not suppose to be for student doctors, Experience doctors should be place there incase of new experience.

Okay what's up with UBTH now. Times have certainly changed because UBTH was the place to go back then if there was a serious problem. I have to say that it also depends on who is caring for the patient. I remember when I went to home in 03 and went to my old high school, my teacher told me how my mom saved her life. She told me that she got an infection after child birth and she was dying but my mom refused to let her die (my mom was a senior nursing sister then) and kept getting more and more antibiotics in her against doctors orders LOL. that's my mom for you. When she feels she is right then she is right. Needless to say saved her life. Without those antibiotics she would have been dead within 24 hours. Many other women were not as fortunate