Research On The Causation Of Crime Of Medical Accident

In recent years, the doctor-patient relationship is receiving more and more attention from people in all fields and there are numerous films and television programs based on the doctor-patient relationship. Angel Heart, one of the most popular Chinese television dramas in 2012, is focused on a hospital and tells us the stories about patients and the medical staff in the hospital. Its main content is directly pointed at the typical Chinese doctor-patient relationship and the purpose of the drama is to enhance the understanding and communication between patients and doctors. The distance to love, one of the most popular inspirational and emotional medical drama series in 2013, through several real cases, shows that patients have no choice but to rely on doctors when they became ill.Doctor-patient relationship was the keyword of the year 2007 in the filed of health care industry. With the development in the medical field and people’s awareness of the rights and legal concepts, more and more medical disputes happened. The conflict between doctors and patients has become a serious social problem. Housing, medical care and education are the top three concerned things of Chinese people. At the same time, the deterioration of the doctor-patient relationship and more medical accidents have become the hidden danger of the social harmony. Proper identification of Crime of medical accident is very important in dealing with the conflict between patients and doctors.From the vertical perspective, the doctor has criminal liability according to law in most civil law countries. Most civil law countries regard medical accident as a crime in the criminal legislation. The legislation of medical negligence is divided into two different modes. One considers medical negligence as ordinary negligence, while another is needed when distinguishing between ordinary negligence and vocational negligence, and medical negligence belongs to vocational negligence. But common law tend to put medical negligence in their tort law, where we can find medical negligence lying in the criminal negligence part, such as death caused by negligence, damage caused by negligence, and other terms. From the horizontal point of view, China has a long history of legislation for Crime of medical accident. The establishment of a specialized medical system can be tracked back to Zhou Dynasty. The regulation of Crime of medical accident has reached quite a high level in Tang Dynasty. The measures for the handling of medical accidents were made in 1987, which clarified the meaning of medical malpractice. The regulations on the handling of medical accidents further defined the measures for the handling of medical accidents in 2002. The regulations on the handling of medical accidents further defined the meaning of medical malpractice. The Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China went into effect in 1997, and is the fundamental law to punish crimes.Article 335 of the current Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China states that, any medical worker who grossly neglected his duty, causing death or severe harm to the health of the person who seeks medical service, shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment for not more than three years or criminal detention. There are four constitutive requirements of Crime of medical accident, including the subject, the object, the subjective aspect and the objective aspect of medical crimes. The object of Crime of medical accident is a complex one, including the state management of the medical working order and the patient’s right to life and health. The objective aspect of the Crime of medical accident is that the actor’s serious irresponsibility in the process of diagnosis and treatment, causing death or severe physical injury of the patient. The subject of the Crime of medical accident is a special subject, namely medical staff. The subjective aspect of the Crime of medical accident is negligence, including negligence faulty (a person should know that his act would lead to a dangerous result to the society but fails to realize due to his negligence) and excessively confident fault(a person has already known the exciting danger but believes that it can be avoided). Malpractice Crime legislation must take account of the dual legal interests of doctors and patients. The punishment which is too strong heavy will be harmful for the development of medical career. On the contrary, if the punishment is too mild, people’s right to life and healthy can not be well protected. Therefore, we must balance the interests of both doctors and patients, and at the same time, we should make sure that this is a reasonable range of the Crime of medical accident. From this point of view, it is necessary to research on the causation of Crime of medical accident.To discuss about the causation of Crime of medical accident, we can divide the causation into two parts:fact/factual causation and law/proximate cause. Only when the medical negligence and the damaged result land in law/proximate cause, this kind of action can be considered as the Crime of medical accident. In the judicial practice of our country, the court rarely explains the causation of the Crime of medical accident in their criminal judgments. Some courts list all the evidences in their criminal judgments, and then come to the conclusion. Under this circumstance, not only the patients but also the doctors may appeal to a higher court to have a reasonable decision. The Medical Malpractice as an expert conclusion, is one kind of criminal evidence, which plays a very important role in the criminal trial.Technical authentication of medical accidents provided by medical expert, which is equipped with medical scientific principle and professional knowledge according to the medical and health management laws, administrative regulations, as well as diagnosis and treatment standard, is a scientific basis for the health administrative departments to deal with medical malpractice disputes. The evidence competency and probative force of identification conclusion of medical malpractice identification are inseparable parts of the research on the Crime of medical accident. So medical malpractice expertise plays a very important role in dealing with the Crime in medical accident and we must take measures to make the medical malpractice expertise much better.