Negligence and malpractice

Topic: Negligence and Medical Malpractice

Reply prompt: Respond to threads posted by your classmates who reached a different conclusion than you did. Identify the points of difference in your analyses and explain how your sources and analysis led you to your conclusion.

The reply assignment asks you to respond to classmates who reached a different conclusion than you did. As often happens on this case, most of the initial threads agree on an overall finding of liability. If you look more closely, however, you will see differences among your threads.

Issues to examine as you write your replies:

• Look for differences in your analyses, how you reached your conclusions, etc.


• Where does liability lie? (just the doctor, just the hospital, other caregivers, some combination, etc.) Each entity that you are holding liable must meet all four of the elements.


• Is the hospital only vicariously liable through respondeat superior for employee negligence, or is it also directly liable for its own actions?


• If the hospital is liable through respondeat superior for the negligence of its employees, should it seek indemnification (reimbursement) from those employees for money it has to pay the Smiths for the employees' negligence?


• How far does liability extend?


• liability for the initial staph infection is somewhat straight-forward, but was the autoimmune impact a reasonably foreseeable outcome from a breach (failure to change gloves, etc.)


• i.e., is there proximate/legal cause as well as factual cause for all of the injuries?

You might also consider options for the various parties at this point, including ADR, Biblical dispute resolution models, etc. 450 words . atleast 3 peer reviewed sources in APA format