| Abstract [eng] |
Doctor’s civil responsibility is specific and it aligns with higher standards because people’s health and often life depends on the quality of the doctor’s actions. A doctor’s professional responsibility appears only when certain legal factors are present: unlawfulness, fault, damage and a cause relationship between unlawfulness of actions and the damage. Doctor’s actions are lawful when they comply with attentive, caring, and qualified doctor’s standard. That’s why it is important to answer the question whether the medical treatment was given with maximum effort of attention, caring, and caution while evaluating doctor’s professional responsibility. Patients can seek for compensation of the material or nonmaterial damage when doctors violate the quality and appropriateness of medical care as well as the confidentiality of the patient’s health. The relatives of the patient in certain cases can also seek for the compensation of nonmaterial damage. While discussing lawful acts and Lithuanian court practice it is possible to make a conclusion that a doctor’s actions can violate various patient’s rights. One of the rights is informing the patient – patients have to be informed without any limitations about their diagnosis, treatment, complications, and other important circumstances, except those cases when a patient in a written manner refuses to receive the information about his/her health. Informing the patient is an essential requirement, without this requirement the patient’s agreement to receive a treatment loses power. A patient’s agreement to be treated is essential. In the cases when the questions concerning moral acts relative to the society are being solved, courts permission is required. There are cases when there is no need to have a written permission to treat patients, to invade their body, to remove their organs: when there is a necessary need to treat the patient, when there’s a threat to a person’s life, when a person’s life is endangered, when a person can’t express their will on their own, when a patient has a disease that threatens the society. In these cases when a doctor doesn’t give the necessary care without a patient’s written permission, a doctor’s actions are said to be unlawful. Doctors have to face the professional responsibility when patients have given their permission for the treatment experience negative consequences because of doctor’s actions – actions that have been uncaring, abandoning, not complying with maximally caring and educated doctor’s standard. Another patient’s right is – information about a patient is confidential. The entire information about patient’s treatment, as well as the rest of the personal patient’s information is being kept confidential, even after the death of the patient. The patient’s written agreement is necessary when there’s a need to reveal confidential information about the patient. It is worth noticing that there are acts of law that allow an exception when confidential information can be revealed to other people, but in that case the information is being revealed in the manner that has been defined by the acts of law and to the people that have been defined in the acts of law, but it is necessary to follow the notion, that the wellness of the patient is more important than society’s interests. A doctor’s lack of caring while giving the medical treatment mostly is permanent, which means that it is impossible to correct doctor’s mistake. According to the practice of Lithuanian Supreme Court it is necessary to detect whether the doctor has been maximally attentive, caring, and careful while trying to determine whether the doctor’s actions have caused him a civil responsibility. The problem arises while trying to define what is “maximal” – therefore it is necessary to determine the standard of a wise and professional doctor, the standard that could be used as a base. |
