Medical malpractice in Hong Kong

Abstract

Hong Kong’s public health has always been regarded as an excellent social programme providing quality service and meeting the basic needs of the general public at a heavily subsidized rate. However, medical malpractice seems to be getting more common in Hong Kong, and news reporting of medical malpractice is becoming more frequent too. This has prompted medical complaints concerning a wide range of medical problems, and a wider debate on the quality of Hong Kong’s healthcare system. As such, the purpose of this study was to explore and understand the nature of medical malpractice in Hong Kong, and find out what forms of harm are caused to the patients and society. Thus, this study set out to identify what medical malpractice really means in Hong Kong through the eyes of different medical professionals.

In total, five medical professionals participated in individual interviews in an effort to give their own opinions on the understandings, perceptions and expectation of the medical system. The findings demonstrated that all the interviewees in this study failed to interpret the nature of medical malpractice, and most of them tended to underestimate the harms caused to people and society. Furthermore, these studies have shown the techniques of neutralization involved in medical malpractice from a neutralization-based cultural criminology perspective. Instead of making doctors accountable, the interviewees tended to shift the blame to the hospital rather than doctors. This might be because our society tends to put high values on group norms over legal norms while failing to acknowledge the harm associated with society.