Dear readers and subscribers,
Medical Law Cases – For Doctors (MLCD) has successfully completed two years of publication and this is the 25th issue. On behalf of the Institute of Medicine & Law and Medknow Publications, I thank all of you for your valuable patronage that has made this achievement possible.
This journal has been interactive since its inception – far more than anticipated. Your queries, your suggestions, your ideas, your appreciation and your criticism - have not only kept us busy but also given us beneficial insight into the changes needed to make this journal more useful and interesting to Indian doctors. This has helped us make the following few but important changes:
In the first anniversary issue (January 2009), we had explained the system in place in making this journal. Since then, we have increased the teams of advocates from 19 to 23 to collect important judgments on medical laws from the Supreme Court of India, National Consumer Commission, State Consumer Commissions and High Courts. More importantly, doctors are now involved in content creation right from the first stage as compared to involvement of only advocates earlier. The editorial board now has more doctors than advocates. This has resulted in perceptible changes in the journal in the last year. Suggested precautions have been more detailed as well as descriptive. At times, even the relevant part of the judgment has been added to point out its link with the suggested precaution. Precautions that cannot be described as ‘legal’ in the strict sense but, at the same time have given rise to legal proceedings, have increased manifold. Simply stated, the attempt has been to become less ‘legal’ and more ‘medical’ without forgetting that the subject covered is law. This in turn has made the journal more interesting for doctors without compromising on its usefulness to the medical fraternity.
There are two specific suggestions made by our readers that we have ignored. First, there were suggestions that precautions that are too simple or merely common sense should be discontinued and second, in case a precaution is given in an issue the same should not be repeated at least for the next few issues. One often finds the same precaution been repeated in the same issue. The justification for overlooking these suggestions was simple. The fact that so many cases arise out of simple mistakes or common sense mistakes; found repeatedly in one case after another, should lead to only one inference - the potential of such errors leading to medico legal cases is huge. On the contrary, this must make our readers more cautious and appropriate steps must be taken by them to avoid such mistakes.
Change is life. MLCD must keep changing if it has to live longer and stay relevant. We, therefore, request you to keep sending your queries, suggestions, ideas, words of appreciation and criticism to us. We will take them into account and keep on making requisite changes in time.
We wish all our readers and subscribers a very happy new year.