Page 1
|
Page 2
|
Page 3
|
Page 4
"At least do no harm"
Hippocrates
This newsletter shares the stories of patients who were subjected to years of apparently unsuitable medical treatment as well as harm arising from that treatment as distinct from their disorder.
Australia's 1977 Webb Report noted this sequence of events; the majority of new patients attending chiropractors shared a history of failed medical treatment, sought chiropractic care for the same disorder and had satisfactory outcomes. By 2006, majority refers to millions of patients.
Patients who have experienced Webb’s sequence of events may ask the chiropractor why the GP failed to meet her/his ethical duty of care. Patients harmed by that failure may ask about a GP’s legal obligations.
J Law Med. 2003 Feb;10(3):271-84 “..it is important to facilitate access to the best of conventional and complementary treatments to ensure better health outcomes for the patient.” Webb's sequence of events is a snapshot of medical failure to facilitate access to, what later proved for many to be, successful chiropractic care for millions of patients.
Brophy E. Does a doctor have a duty to provide information and advice about complementary and alternative medicine? J Law Med. 2003; 10: 271-248 raises the issue of legal obligation to refer. “Indeed, while no cases yet exist where a doctor has been found liable for failure to advise a patient of CAM treatment options, it is arguable that a doctor's common law obligation to provide information requires that he or she has a duty to provide information about CAM therapy where that information would be material to a particular patient.”
Webb's sequence of events captures millions of moments when GPs failed to ensure better health outcomes for the patient by not providing information about chiropractic that would, as later events imply, have been material to those patients.
Remarkably, millions of Good Samaritans filled that role by providing information about chiropractic that would later prove to have been material to successful chiropractic patients.
Those patients and all chiropractors owe a heartfelt vote of thanks to these Good Samaritans.