The higher good clause: Will the justice minister keep his word?

- One in ten patients who are treated in a hospital will fall victim to an adverse medical event. This is the international data. It could be an event that simply results from the organization of the system, results from the conduct of many people, or is simply unavoidable," Jakub Kosikowski, spokesman for the Supreme Medical Chamber, said Monday during a meeting with journalists.

The local government wants to introduce a "culture of fair treatment," an element of which would be the higher good clause. This is a development of the no fault system, in which a doctor (medical worker), is not subject to punishment if, while caring for the patient and performing medical services, he acted in a way that entailed adverse reactions, complications - and, as a result, damage to the patient's health. Criminal liability would remain for cases of gross negligence or simply breaking the law. Of course, the no fault system only frees the doctor (medical professional) from criminal liability - civil and professional liability still remains.

From the beginning of the work on the Law on Quality in Health Care, which introduced the Medical Event Compensation Fund into the Polish system, the Medical Association supported this solution, but pointed out - and continues to point out - that without a no-fault system it is practically dead. An additional problem is that the compensation amounts offered to patients are too low. The basic problem, however, is that doctors and other medical professionals still have no sense of security, so they even hide from the patient that a medical event has occurred. - The higher good clause is needed not only so that the patient can quickly get compensation, that is, money that he often needs as soon as possible to be able to rehabilitate or adjust his life to what happened, but also so that this mistake is discussed by the hospital staff, so that the event is not swept under the rug and so that it is not allowed to happen again, or to minimize the risk of it happening in the future as much as possible, Jakub Kosikowski stressed.

President of the Supreme Medical Council Luke Jankowski stressed that surveys conducted among medical and nursing personnel show the scale of the problem: more than 86 percent of respondents were involved in medical (adverse) events. - If we continue this system of punishment, it would turn out that almost all doctors and nurses should be analyzed by a prosecutor. There is no denying that adverse events simply happen in medicine, to almost everyone. We can't feel like we got away with it this time because no one reported anything to the prosecutor's office. We must have systemic support to correct the mistake and learn from the mistakes.