|
KMID : 1234820080090020231
|
|
Korean Society of Law and Medicine
2008 Volume.9 No. 2 p.231 ~ p.267
|
|
|
Doctor’s Failure to Provide Effective Treatments for Smokers and the Legal Responsibility of Medical Malpractice
|
|
Kim Un-Mook
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
|
Tobacco has become the world’s leading cause of deaths and diseases. And !be tobacco use and dependence itself is a kind of diseases, so-called "mental and be-havioural disorders due to use of tobacco" in "International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems(ICD-10)" and "Korean Standard Classification of Diseases". The tobacco use and dependence is a chronic disease that requires repeated clinical interventions and multiple attempts to quit. But effective treatments to the tobacco use and dependence are developed and exist that can significantly increase the rate of long-tenn smoking abstinence. So the physicians should warn smoking patients about the dangers of smoking to the health and the life, and the clinicians ought to provide one of more of the treatments which have been proven effective in helping smokers quit to smoke. It has been concluded that if a doctor failed to provide effective treatment for smokers, and the smokers subsequently died of the smokers-related conditions(tobaccosis) or became incapacitated by the tobaccosis the smokers were considered in the medical malpractice. Thus the smokers could sue the physician for medical malpractice, claiming that the doctor’s legal responsibility of appropriate treatments including smoking-cessation which the physician deliberately or negligently breached.
|
|
|
KEYWORD
|
|
|
tobacco use and dependence, mental and behavioural disorders, smoking-cessation, medical malpractice, dangers of smoking
|
|
|
FullTexts / Linksout information
|
|
|
|
|
|
Listed journal information
|
|
|