Reporting of Adverse Medical Events in Poland with Particular Focus on Criminal Law Aspects

Abstract

The article examines the criminal law aspects of implementing the idea of reporting adverse events in medicine into the Polish legal system. An analysis of the organisational factors underlying treatment errors leads to the conclusion that, given the increasing complexity of healthcare delivery, it is essential to implement systemic mechanisms for monitoring, analysing and improving clinical and management processes. Improvements in the quality of healthcare and patient safety cannot be realised without establishing a system for reporting and analysing adverse events, which enables the identification of multifactorial causes of errors, including organisational errors. The concept of an adverse event register is intended to reflect a shift away from a punitive model towards a culture of safety. Sometimes, refraining from criminal sanctions may, paradoxically, improve patient safety and thus prove more cost-effective than punishment. The fear of stigmatisation is one of the major obstacles to the reporting of adverse events. Minimising this fear by introducing mechanisms that encourage openness in discussing adverse events may contribute to increasing detection rates, and thus to greater effectiveness in minimising the scale of medical errors. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that, although the matter is complex from the perspective of criminal law principles, it is nevertheless possible to find solutions that would serve the objectives of the incident reporting system whilst remaining consistent with the Polish criminal law system.