Criminal responsibility for medical injury: A helpful or harmful mechanism for patient safety?

Abstract

This special issue of Medical Law International stems from an interdisciplinary workshop which took place in November 2019, titled ‘Criminal responsibility for medical error – a helpful or harmful mechanism for delivering patient safety’. The event was funded by the Irish Research Council’s New Foundations Scheme, and held at the School of Law, University College Cork, to address growing concern around the use of the criminal law to regulate healthcare practices and to consider the implications, if any, for patient safety. The papers included in this special issue are revised versions of selected papers presented at this workshop. As editor of this issue, I am grateful to all those who participated in the workshop and to the Irish Research Council, for making this knowledge exchange possible. I would also like to sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers of the papers included in this special issue. This special issue, Criminal responsibility for medical injury: a helpful or harmful mechanism for patient safety? seeks to investigate some of the core challenges posed by the increasing interactions of the criminal law with the practice of medicine. The rise in criminal investigations and prosecutions of medical practitioners arguably reflects changing societal attitudes to the profession,1 and while the desire for accountability is understandable and important, it is argued that criminal sanction is only ‘helpful’ where it is morally appropriate and improves patient safety. It is positively harmful where it does little to improve patient safety and to ensure the delivery of safe healthcare, but rather is experienced as punitive in nature and criminalises physicians for incidents of human error.2 The authors of this collection of papers, Ash Samanta and Jo Samanta,