The concept of negligence of health workers in professional activities in criminal law

Situations where health workers have a negligent performance of their duties to preserve life and health of patients are commonly referred to by the term "medical error". The legislation of the Russian Federation does not know the definition of "medical error" and other similar to it, which is not so for the legal and medical doctrine. However, experts in law and medicine understand the content of this term in opposite meanings, which creates difficulties in enforcement. For example, one group of scholars indicates the presence of elements of guilty infliction of harm to the life and health of patients when medical staff provides health services. Other authors emphasize the infliction of harm to the life and health of patients by health care workers in the exercise of professional activities in connection with: 1) improper actions of medical staff, in which there is no element of intentional or negligent harm; 2) an honest mistake in the choice of tactics and immediate medical care; 3) the absence or incompleteness of expertise in qualified health care; 4) the imperfection of medicine. The lack of standards in the domestic legislation which establishes the meaning of the definition under consideration creates certain difficulties in law enforcement in the manufacture of the criminal law assessment of substandard care, in the qualification of the offence, in bringing the perpetrators to legal liability. In this connection, it is necessary first of all to give the best definition of providing defective services to patients by medical personnel in the exercise of their professional activity. It seems that the use of the definition "medical error" existing in the national medical and legal doctrine to refer to the low-quality provision of health care services for patients both in theory and in practice is not appropriate. To solve the problem in the best definition of this phenomenon is possible by the use of such terms as "negligence of medical personnel in the exercise of professional activities". "Negligence of medical personnel in the exercise of professional activity" should refer to the improper performance of a medical officer of his duties owing to an unfair or negligent attitude to the professional activity if it caused bodily injury of varying severity or death of the patient.

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