Redefining the Medical Negligence Action : A Doctor’s Duty to Take Care

This ambitious and important book explores the new concept of the doctor-patient relationship, told from the private law perspective.

The doctor-patient relationship is different to others. Doctors are required to take positive action when dealing with patients and, accordingly, can be held liable for omissions. However, due to the strict adherence to physical injury as the dominant form of damage in negligence law, a doctor’s duty of care is operating, in effect, as a duty not to negligently cause physical injury.

This book identifies this to be the main barrier to protecting interests other than bodily integrity in medical negligence law. By so doing, it sets out a new duty of care framework: namely that a doctor would owe a ‘positive duty to take care’ of the patient’s interests. This would ensure that the reasons for requiring doctors to take positive action would be carried through to the damage enquiry. Damage would either not be necessary, or would be expanded to include interests other than bodily integrity. It offers an important and ambitious new way of thinking about the doctor-patient relationship.