Medical Malpractice and Liability Issues

Medical malpractice and liability in pharmacy concerns the legal and professional consequences that arise when pharmacists or prescribing physicians deviate from accepted standards of care, causing patient harm. Researchers examine how the threat of litigation shapes clinical behavior — including whether it encourages safer practice or drives costly defensive prescribing — and how tort law mechanisms translate into real-world outcomes for patients, providers, and health systems. A central open question is whether current liability frameworks actually improve care quality or simply redistribute financial risk without addressing the underlying conditions that lead to errors. Active work in the area focuses on how clinical guidelines interact with legal standards of care, and on designing reform strategies that reduce preventable harm while keeping litigation a viable recourse for patients who are genuinely wronged.

Works

145,322

Total citations

363,390

Keywords

Malpractice RiskDefensive MedicinePatient ComplaintsTort ReformPhysician LiabilityHealthcare Quality