Assessment of Medical Liability Systems with More Emphasize on Ethical Challenges

Medical liability systems play an important role on doctors’ everyday practices and their relationship with patients. They can be established in two ways, fault-based and non-fault. Basing medical liability upon the element of fault links it to various issues of medical ethics. In this paper, we have studied the possible ways each system, could affect the applicability of values and principles of medical ethics. In order to achieve that, we have ethically analyzed the different aspects of civil medical liability law, using the four medical ethics principles and the issue of physician-patient relationship. The less prominent the element of fault in a medical liability system, the more it can succeed to apply ethical principles and hence to flourish the virtues and moral values in the medical society. Adversarial nature, creating stress and tension in physician-patient relationship due to patients’ complaints, a blame atmosphere toward medical errors and failure to provide access to fair compensation for medical injury, are among the most important ethical problems with the fault-based medical liability systems.