By PAULINE W. CHEN, M.D.
Source: The New York Times 12/15/11
Within months of completing my training, I received the call that every doctor dreads.
“You’ve been named in a malpractice lawsuit,” said the hospital administrator on the other end of the line.
The family of a patient I had seen briefly a year before believed that a colleague’s decision not to operate hastened her demise. Now their lawyers, combing through the medical records, believed that a single sentence in my note brought that doctor’s decision into question. As a second or maybe even third opinion, I had written that the woman was a “possible candidate” for surgery.