OCTOBER 5 — Re: ‘Experts back registry of specialist writers for commissioned medical reports for court cases’ published in Malay Mail on October 2, 2022.
Medical Protection Society (MPS), which protects and supports the professional interests of more than 4,000 healthcare professionals in Malaysia and almost 300,000 healthcare professionals globally, believes that providing an opinion as a medical expert is an interesting and rewarding role which could be deemed as an integral part of professional practice.
Medical expert opinion is crucial in civil, coronial, criminal and regulatory cases, as well as in clinical negligence claims. It can determine the course of an investigation, and the standard doctors are held to. The standard that the doctor is measured against is set to a large extent by the medical expert witnesses.
If an expert report leads to unnecessary escalation of a case, there can be significant implications (including distress, anger, lack of closure and involvement in legal processes) for patients and their families. For doctors, an adverse opinion can lead to loss of career and reputation.
It is vital therefore to have good quality, up-to-date experts who have received appropriate training and are able to give a balanced account. Medical experts’ duty is to the court and not the lawyers who have engaged them. In our experience as a global organisation, we have noticed concerns about the difficulty of accessing good quality experts and the reluctance of doctors to take on this role. The reasons for this situation are multiple and complex.
MPS supports the call for a list of available medical experts and we would like more doctors to be encouraged to acquire the necessary skills to provide expert opinion. We believe that all doctors should be able to act as experts if they have undergone appropriate training. After acquiring the relevant skills, doctors should be in a position to provide a balanced expert opinion, based on up-to-date guidelines and current evidence, as to whether care provided was of a reasonable standard.
We would like doctors and healthcare organisations, including employers to view case analysis and report writing as core competences. Promoting the acquisition and use of these skills would have potential benefits for patients, healthcare professionals, and society as a whole.
Dr Mohamed Faruqi Uzair Mohamed Sidek
Medicolegal Consultant, Medical Protection Society
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or organisation and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
