Many people think that being a doctor is a dangerous profession. Sounds silly right? How can it be dangerous to be a doctor?
While it is true that
doctors do not need to work in the middle of a war zone, many
patients definitely try to wage war against them and their mistakes. They
tend to do this via lawsuits and lawyers. If a doctor makes a mistake in either
diagnosis or surgery, many patients want to and actually end up suing
them.
The charts below
illustrate exactly how many doctors have lawsuits filed against them. As
depicted, the numbers are surprisingly high.
This particular chart demonstrates the percent of doctors in different areas of medicine who have lawsuits filed against them. Obstetrics-gynecologists are sued the most. Also, as the age of the doctors increases, so does the number of lawsuits filed against them. Obviously, lawsuits are amassed just as experience is!
In the graph below, we see that many more obstetrics-gynecologists have been sued than not sued. What does than say about doctors and their patients? Does this mean that most doctors are ignorant and are making mistakes? Or does this mean that the patients are able to sue doctors with too much ease?
This graph also shows how with age, the lawsuits doctors have filed against them increases. In this case, the number of lawsuits emergency doctors have had filed against them reaches almost 80% near the end of their careers.
