The modern American emergency center has unfortunately become a veritable mine field of potentially litigious encounters. Clinical problems range from the trivial to the catastrophic, chaos is common, and the patient and physician are, at best, strangers eternal.
Preventing Emergency Malpractice is a commendable attempt to help the practicing physician in emergency care negotiate the pitfalls of both trauma and torts. The authors, practicing emergency physicians with legal expertise, use case anecdotes to assist the discussion of medical-legal issues in a broad variety of dilemmas, such as "resuscitation and malpractice" and "dealing with intoxicated patients." The text is very readable with succinct chapters, bold, attention-getting subtitles, and up-to-date references. In fact, the text can be easily used by other health professionals such as nurses or administrators for information or to assist in peer review or quality assurance projects. The book's brevity, however, sacrifices nuances of law, ethics, and medical practice