Doctors have Rules that they must follow just like everyone else. The number one Patient Safety Rule that a prudent doctor and hospital must follow is to do no harm. Or to put it another way, a doctor may never needlessly endanger a patient. When the Rules get broken, it becomes our job as the community to make sure they take responsibility for it. We’re not just trying to bring justice to the people who are injured, we want to send them a message that we won’t tolerate them doing harm to someone we love. Shouldn’t it be rare that you know of someone who was injured or killed by malpractice? It’s not anymore. There may be a lot of reasons why this is happening, but the lack of any substantial “penalty” has become the biggest one.

We have a jury system that is supposed to protect us by punishing those who are negligent. So why has it stopped working for malpractice? The answer is because of “corporate spin” and the powerful insurance companies that distort the truth in the media and try to brainwash all of us into believing that every case is frivolous. Have you seen the documentary “Hot Coffee” yet? It’s a film that depicts the truth about what really happened in the McDonald’s Coffee case. It surprises many of us when we learn the truth and uncover all the myths that the insurance industry has been trying to perpetrate.

So we urge you to participate in jury duty because it’s a great way to ensure your own safety, and the safety of those you love. And when you do, you will no doubt hear a defense lawyer argue that the action that would have prevented an injury, or saved a human life, wasn’t part of that doctor’s so called “standard of care”. This has now become the “standard defense” in nearly every malpractice case. Yet all you need to do is use your common sense. A prudent doctor is never allowed to violate the patient safety rules by endangering a patient. The best way to prevent them from doing to us what they did to someone else, is to hold them accountable when they violate Patient Safety Rules.