Medical Law and Ethics Discussion Questions Essay - 1

Medical Law and Ethics Discussion Questions - Essay Example Since doctors and other healthcare professionals are highly exposed to malpractice lawsuits due to the delicate nature of their patient treatments, they are forced to buy expensive malpractice insurance coverage in order to protect themselves from suits. Doctors choose to cover all their bases when treating patients by ordering a battery of tests which may or may not be necessary during the course of the patients treatment in order to have hard documentation that they took all possible courses of action during the patients treatment. Thus they oftentimes successfully prevent negligence instead of having to defend themselves from negligence accusations in the future. Common law is applied to cases wherein a judge decides on the outcome of the case. Therefore, common law is created by judges and based upon the merits of the current case or past precedents. Statutory law on the other hand is created by the legislative arm or government of a country. The government has the power to mete out what is deemed to be the proper punishment for certain crimes. Statutory laws also apply to judicial cases which the courts refer to the government for final decisions. The numbering system in public law, also known as the Key Number System is an indexing system used to organize case law materials. This method helps speed up the research time of legal professionals and insures that the material they find is accurate and relevant to their cases since the numbering system applies to the issues that cover the law one is looking up. Burden of proof refers to the evidence presented before the court of law by the prosecution or defense wherein they have to prove any and all accusations that they make against the complainant or defendant in the courts of law. They must present sufficient evidence to the courts in order to convince the judge or jury of their innocence or guilt. Subpoena is a Latin word that means