Legal Issues in Residency

[artorious22]

At my institution, AMG's are expected to have their unrestricted license by the start of PGY-3. I am a little nervous doing so . At least writing orders and being supervised with a licensed attending, if anything bad goes down, the attending goes down with me and shares responsibility (from what my understanding is). When you are licensed in residency and something catastrophic happens like a patient codes on the unit, or god forbid dies (commits suicide after discharge) for instance, does the attending get sued, or does the resident get sued and is their career forever finished?

I just like sharing responsibility with the attending. I don't feel like I should ever be forced to have a license during residency especially when I'm being given orders to treat patient's.

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[splik]

As a resident you are always under the supervision of an attending (at least in theory), your licensing status is irrelevant to this. I hope you will take stock of what you are saying, god forbid a physician should be forced to have medical license! how dreadful!

You are just as likely to be named in a lawsuit without a license than your are with one (and in fact it would look worse). Usually when a lawsuit is filed they name everyone (including the med student), and you may or may not be dropped depending on who they could get the most money from, and also how negligent your conduct was. For example if you were grossly negligent and defiant of your attending or did not inform your attending of what you were doing then yes you can expect that they would go after you. Residents are not held to the same standard as attendings however, you would be held to the standard of what reasonable resident physician at that level of training could have been expected to do. Increasingly, law suits are going after the actual hospital as people would prefer to sue faceless institutions and there is potentially more money there. I think you're worrying about nothing.

 

[J ROD]

Get the license so you can moonlight to pay off that lawsuit! lol

 

[masterofmonkeys]

My understanding is that the attending STILL assumes the liability, regardless of our licensure status.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Even with a full license, you're not actually credentialed at your hospital to practice independently. You're not the physician of record for the treatment. As mentioned above, you might or might not get named in a lawsuit, but I don't think having a full license or not affects your status in a lawsuit.

 

[artorious22]

As a resident you are always under the supervision of an attending (at least in theory), your licensing status is irrelevant to this. I hope you will take stock of what you are saying, god forbid a physician should be forced to have medical license! how dreadful!

You are just as likely to be named in a lawsuit without a license than your are with one (and in fact it would look worse). Usually when a lawsuit is filed they name everyone (including the med student), and you may or may not be dropped depending on who they could get the most money from, and also how negligent your conduct was. For example if you were grossly negligent and defiant of your attending or did not inform your attending of what you were doing then yes you can expect that they would go after you. Residents are not held to the same standard as attendings however, you would be held to the standard of what reasonable resident physician at that level of training could have been expected to do. Increasingly, law suits are going after the actual hospital as people would prefer to sue faceless institutions and there is potentially more money there. I think you're worrying about nothing.

I don't feel like I should have to pay the consequences when I think an attending is making a big mistake by discharging a woman who came in by trying to hang herself just for reimbursement reasons (I know he is pressured by case management). Nor do I feel that a patient needs to be on 3 different antipsychotics and risk having a dystonic reaction.

I just don't want my license to be jeopardized by some of the risky moves I've had to make at the request of my attending.

 

[PistolPete]

OP, residency is like war, at least to me. I feel like I'm coming out very different than how I came in. Your job as a resident, especially an intern, is to learn as much as you can, provide the best possible care you can while ultimately looking out for yourself, so that you can finish residency and then provide the care that is of the highest quality once you're an attending. You can't do that if you go around causing problems and get suspended/dismissed.

Medicine is unforgiving. Your entire effort is essentially useless if you don't finish residency. It's all or none, unfortunately.

And I'll echo the above comments: you are unlikely to be sued, and even if they sue everyone, there's a 99% chance they'll drop you from the suit. Don't worry about it.