Knowledge about Legal Aspects of Medical Negligence in India among Dentists– A Questionnaire Survey

Abstract

Introduction: Medical negligence is the breach of legal duty to care which includes the damages, and establishing causation .Awareness towards medical negligence is increasing day by day among patients. Recent court    rulings have also been in favour of the complainants where there is proven case of negligence which has encouraged others to take up their grievances  There is no special subject where dentists learn about legal aspects of medical negligence. Hence this study was done to assess their knowledge on legal aspects of medical negligence.
Materials and Method: An online questionnaire with 15 questions regarding legal aspects of medical negligence was sent to 100 dentists of a well reputed dental college. The completed forms were evaluated. The results were calculated as percentage and tabulated as graphs.
Result: The awareness was less among dentists for most of the questions. Majority of them knew the term medical negligence but terms least known were res ispa loquitor, bolam’s test and Bolitho case. The other questions had less than an average response.
Conclusion : The survey results showed that the knowledge of dentists regarding the legal aspects of medical negligence was poor. This survey assessed the knowledge of the dentists and also enlightened the respondents with answers pertaining to the questions. More awareness must be created so that doctors are more careful and hence patients benefitted.