Bitter Medicine: What I've Learned and Teach about Malpractice Lawsuits (And How to Avoid Them)

Dr. Richard Kessler tells what he's learned as a medical student, intern, resident, practicing physician, general surgeon, U.S. Army doctor, teacher, researcher and expert witness. This surgeon-professor dramatizes how he's used tragic malpractice case histories as teaching tools – showing medical students how to "Do No Harm" by avoiding preventable human errors and fatal mistakes. "Some Americans," he writes, "have been persuaded that most medical malpractice lawsuits are 'frivolous'–that they are without merit. If that were true, I would have had a hard time finding the cases I presented in my students. I did not. No deep research was required. I didn’t have to go looking for horror stories. They came looking for me." General readers who find medical and legal journals daunting will turn these pages for the gripping stories and find them being educated painlessly along with Dr. Kessler’s young students. They'll learn what questions to ask their doctors – and what kind of doctors to avoid – before it's too late.