Medical Malpractice Litigation | Supreme Court Judgment Holding That a Physician Who Discharged a Patient Who Subsequently Died Did Not Commit Occupational Negligence Causing Death

The physician charged in this medical malpractice case discharged a patient without confirming a particular test, leading to the patient's death.

The defendant, an internal medicine specialist, performed a complete blood count, a general chemistry test, and a liver ultrasound on a patient who came to the hospital with symptoms such as a high fever.

Although the complete blood count showed that the patient's white blood cell count was higher than normal, the defendant did not check the C-reactive protein level, which is an inflammation marker.

The defendant provided only symptomatic treatment and discharged the patient without suspecting an acute infection.

After being discharged, the patient went into septic shock and died of multiple organ failure, and the defendant was indicted on the charge of occupational negligence causing death.

Unlike the lower court's determination in this medical malpractice case, the Supreme Court found that the defendant had diagnosed the patient with acute enteritis and had taken measures appropriate to that diagnosis.

Supreme Court precedent states that, in order to find a physician negligent in a medical malpractice case, it must be possible to recognize that the physician could have foreseen and avoided the resulting outcome yet failed to foresee or avoid it.

The precedent also provides that whether a physician was negligent must be judged by the standard of the ordinary duty of care that an average physician engaged in the same work or field would normally be expected to exercise, and that the general level of medical knowledge at the time of the incident, the medical environment and conditions, and the special characteristics of the medical practice must be taken into account.

Based on this precedent, the Supreme Court held that it was difficult to find medical negligence on the ground that the defendant had taken symptomatic measures to relieve the patient's symptoms and had not hospitalized the patient after the C-reactive protein level results were confirmed.

The Supreme Court also found it difficult to conclude that the defendant could have foreseen that the patient would deteriorate so rapidly, with symptoms such as sepsis and septic shock, as to die within a single day, and it therefore reversed and remanded the lower judgment.

For the offense of occupational negligence causing death to be established in a medical malpractice case, a causal relationship between the medical negligence, even if recognized, and the resulting injury or death must be proven.

When assessing whether a physician was negligent in making a diagnosis, the Supreme Court judges the matter not by the standard of a flawless clinical diagnosis but within the range of the diagnostic level being practiced in the field of clinical medicine.

Within the level of that range, the Supreme Court examines whether the physician exercised the necessary best duty of care by carefully examining and accurately diagnosing the patient on the basis of the medical ethics, medical knowledge, and experience required of a professional.

The 🔗Medical Litigation Group of Daeryun Law Firm LLP includes medical litigation attorneys with experience as members of the Korea Medical Dispute Mediation and Arbitration Agency and as judges in the medical divisions of the court, who provide strategies tailored to each situation.

In particular, by working with Daeryun's criminal and civil groups, it forms case-handling teams to respond across all areas, including medical criminal and civil matters.