Medical Negligence & Its Remedies: The Indian Context
Keywords:
Negligence, Indian Context, Doctor-Patient Relationship, Duty to Care, Remedies.Abstract
“You must exercise reasonable caution to avoid acts or omissions that you might fairly anticipate would cause harm to your neighbour”. Honoring Lord Atkinas’ words in Donoghue v. Stevenson, even Indian law requires every individual to act reasonably prudently, taking care of others and protecting them from all potential harm. Notably, failure to act accordingly amounts to negligence as recognized by the law. As this duty depends on facts, circumstances, and the inherent risk involved, the standard of care to be taken varies with every profession, owing to the very intricacy of the profession in question. Similarly, the medical profession is paramount to complicated and delicate mandates; as a result, medical professionals are bound to exercise greater caution, and failure to do so is known as medical negligence. This review paper attempts to summarize the legal status of medical negligence and remedies available against it in the Indian domain.
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