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The Rules of Professional Conduct for Medical and Dental Practitioners also known as the Code of Medical Ethics highlights some instances that would amount to Professional Negligence. Some of these are:
(A) Failure to attend promptly to a patient requiring urgent attention when the practitioner was in a position to do so.
(B) Manifestation of incompetence in the assessment of a patient.
(C) Making an incorrect diagnosis particularly when the clinical features were so glaring that no reasonable skillful practitioner could have failed to notice them.
(D) Failure to advise, or proffering wrong advice to, a patient on the risk involved in a particular operation or course of treatment, especially if such an operation or course of treatment is likely to result-in serious side effects like deformity or loss of organ.
(E) Failure to obtain the consent of the patient (informed or otherwise) before proceeding on any surgical procedure or course of treatment, when such a consent was necessary.
(F) Making a mistake in treatment e.g. amputation of the wrong limb, inadvertent termination of a pregnancy, prescribing the wrong drug in error for a correctly diagnosed ailment, etc.
(G) Failure to refer or transfer a patient in good time when such a referral or transfer was necessary
H) Failure to do anything that ought reasonably to have been done under any circumstance for the good of the patient.
(I) Failure to see a patient as often as his medical condition warrants or to make proper notes of the practitioner’s observations and prescribed treatment during such visits or to communicate with the patient or his relation as may be necessary with regards to any developments, progress or prognosis in the patient’s condition.
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