Dental malpractice lawsuit cases in Saudi Arabia: A national study.
Dental Litigation
Dental Malpractice
Dentistry
Ethics
General Practitioners
Journal
The Saudi dental journal
ISSN: 1013-9052
Titre abrégé: Saudi Dent J
Pays: Saudi Arabia
ID NLM: 9313603
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Dec 2022
Dec 2022
Historique:
received:
24
08
2022
revised:
31
10
2022
accepted:
01
11
2022
entrez:
26
12
2022
pubmed:
27
12
2022
medline:
27
12
2022
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
Over the past twenty years, dental practice in Saudi Arabia has developed considerably, along with increase in population's knowledge of their rights. However, there is a lack of evidence and research on dental malpractice lawsuit cases in Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence and content of legal suits regarding dental malpractice in Saudi Arabia, and to explore the factors and circumstances that were associated with these cases. This was a retrospective study on dental malpractice litigation cases between January 2017 and December 2020. Only cases with final court verdicts were included. The cases were collected from 13 Medico-Legal Committee (MLC) across Saudi Arabia while practitioners' data were retrieved from the General Directorate of Healthcare Licensing at Ministry of Health (MOH). A designed data sheet was used, which was categorized into three main sections: plaintiff demographic data, defendant demographic, data case details in the court. During the four years period, 864 cases with verdicts were studied. Most of the cases were against general dental practitioners, and majority of complaints involved prosthodontic procedures followed by endodontics. The majority of the malpractice lawsuit cases (93 %) were against non-Saudi dental practitioners and 72 % were against experienced practitioners with more than ten years of experience. Almost all cases were in the private sector. Only 10 % of cases had a consent form previously provided to the patients before treatment, and most of cases lacked proper medical documentation. The mean average trial period was 3.3 months and 76 % of defendants were found guilty. The number of cases is rising since 2017. Good documentation, compliance to informed consent protocols and dental privileges helped practitioners to avoid being found guilty.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36570586
doi: 10.1016/j.sdentj.2022.11.002
pii: S1013-9052(22)00138-9
pmc: PMC9767827
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Pagination
763-771Informations de copyright
© 2022 The Authors.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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