24 Feb 10 Medical Practitioners and Japanese Translation Workers Protest Over Insurance Premiums

In nearly every country, Medical malpractice premiums have been rising for years and all medical workers, including language translators are concerned. Even if you aren’t in the health care field, you are bound to have heard about the growing number of medical malpractice cases that keeps pushing insurance and legal fees higher and higher. But premiums aren’t just rising for doctors, they are also hitting medical translators too. Anyone who has stayed current with the medical field understands that this explosion medical malpractice litigation is causing serious damage to the quality of care given to patients. This is hitting a wide range of employees from doctors to Japanese Translation workers in medical translation. Because growing numbers of health workers can no longer afford liability or malpractice insurance, they simply exit the job market or find a different line of work. From the third quarter of the last century, a specialty in the field of legal studies emerged that combined medical education with legal practice.. Since then, the emergence of medical law as a discipline has emerged and created widespread panic among health care workers throughout the United States. With medical malpractice insurance premiums soaring out of control along with frivolous litigation and runaway juries, many health workers have left the business. In fact, new research suggest that the anxiety that traditional medical workers and even non traditional medical workers like Legal Translation workers experience may be a driver in the measurable number of healthcare workers who leave the industry each year. Unfortunately, declining number of health care workers only makes care more difficult to access.

But who are the real victims of medical malpractice? It tends to be the medical staff who are increasing leaving the careers due to stress of potential malpractice lawsuits and patients who suffer from higher medical expenses. As a result, health care providers are increasing protecting themselves against malpractice through defensive medicine that deters patients from filing medical malpractice claims and it provides documented evidence that the practitioner is practicing according to the standard of care, so that if, in the future, legal action is initiated, liability can be pre-empted. As a retired physician, Medical Translation Professional and lawyer, I believe I am in a unique position to inform and help educate physicians. While nobody in the medical community is free from the risk that malpractice represents, it has a tendency to involve those with their own companies. In my Medical Translation practice, my translation workers must navigate the same treacherous medical–legal waters as other health care providers.

With my background, formal training in the field of law and medicine, I am often given opportunities to talk to groups of people that include fellow medical workers and students. In fact, the Obama administration recently invited me to provide input and serve as a guest lecturer at an upcoming health care symposium. As little as ten years ago, it would have been unfathomable for health care students to hear lectures on Medical Translation, legal translation and malpractice issues. Today it seems strange to read a medical publication and not see a story on Medical Translation or Legal Translation in the health care field.

While it is the opinion held by medical workers, new tort reform must be enacted that will make it harder for misguided patients and their lawyers to sue. From surgeons to nurses aids, all healthcare employees should receive instruction on the laws that apply to medicine and their responsibilities in providing efficient services. But immediate action must be taken because the negative press encircling the healthcare community is unlikely to let up.

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