A Lawsuit Can Turn a Physician's Life Upside Down
If you know that a medical error or bad outcome has occurred, you may be somewhat expecting to hear from a lawyer—or at the very least, from an unhappy patient who wants you to "do something."

Yet most malpractice lawsuits come as a jolting and unpleasant surprise. More than three quarters (87%) of physicians sued were either very or somewhat surprised by the action, and almost one half (49%) of all physicians sued said there was no identifiable trigger event that would have alerted them to know that a lawsuit might be coming.
That's one of the insights from Medscape's Malpractice Report 2017, the result of a survey in which more than 4000 physicians told about their lawsuit and court experiences, and how it affected their lives and their relationships with patients. The report also reveals physicians' thoughts about how the case affected their reputation, what they might in hindsight do differently now, and what advice they have for other physicians.
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Is the malpractice situation in the United States getting better or worse? And what do physicians who were sued have to say about whether their lawsuit was fair and what they should have done differently?
Some key findings of the report include: