The Health Care Provider's Guide to Facing the Malpractice Deposition

Rating:
Summary: Informative and readable
Review: As an attorney who has represented clients on both sides of the proverbial isle, I plan to have my clients read this book before any deposition. Dr. Uribe sucessfully demisifies this process for the non-lawyer and makes it understandable to those who do not think like us. I believe this book gives several useful tools to help those not trained in the law navagate a difficult and stressful experience. Excellent work!

Rating:
Summary: Outright ripoff
Review: I am a plaintiff attorney and read this book out of outright curiosity. It got stars across the board, so I figured it was worth 50 bucks. I could not have been more wrong.

Uribe is more interested in disparaging the plaintiff's lawyer, using various and predictable words to describe them. But that does not do the reader an injustice and, to be plain, does not bother me in the least. If those buying Uribe's book are my future deponents, I am in good shape. And why?

First, she gives the doctor-defendant a false sense of security. "It is my opinion that medical malpractice litigation rarely has anything to do with the bad practice of medicine. Medical dissatisfaction would be a more appropriate term. The complaintant is unhappy with an outcome and wants compensation in the form of money," Uribe reports on pg. 42.

What?? A patient who had the wrong arm amputated is merely dissatisfied? A small child doomed to a lifetime of paralysis because of negligent hospital care is only unhappy with the outcome? A patient with loose and failing dental implants is only in it for the money? What on earth is Uribe thinking? Are those injured by physician malfeasance in those instances only trying to make a buck?

The problem is, there is no advice in this book worth taking. It is either war stories (Uribe has been a frequent defendant, leading me to ask other questions) or screeds about evil plaintiffs or the expert witnesses who will testify on their behalf.

To Uribe, plaintiff experts are traitors, rats telling on their own kind and not doctors concerned about the purity of their profession and the regard in which it is held. Giving some creedence to the possible legitmacy of some malpractice actions would make Uribe so much more credible. Instead, she used this platform to rank on those that have deposed and sued her.

The real danger is that the advice that is given is fantastically wrong. On page 18, Uribe tells a story about an emergency room doctor and nurse who come within seconds of giving the wrong medicine. They realize it at the last second, and the day is saved.

Uribe goes on to ask if they hadn't caught their error, would that have been negligent? The answer is an obvious yes. Only Uribe is relating the anecdote to describe to the reader what the legal definition is of the standard of care (meaning the level of care that keeps a doctor OUT of trouble).

"Were the doctor and/or nurse negligent? Was the medication misplaced with the intent of harming the patient? Was there a willful disregard for this critical patient's well-being?," Uribe asks, somewhat rhetorically.

Only she is NOT describing negligence there. Questions of intentional actions of willful conduct are separate and distinct areas of the law. As some may know, you need not act intentionally or willfully to be negligent. Merely doing less than the standard of care is negligence.

The problem is Uribe has no idea what she is talking about. She relates stories about how doctors obfuscated during depositions. But then makes positively no mention about how such conduct hurts a defendant's cause. Trying to outlawyer the lawyer on the "other side" is no better an idea than giving the lawyer a scalpel and telling him to operate.

If you are in need of this book because you are a doctor being sued, don't buy it. Instead, go to Martindale Hubbard, find the preeminent malpractice defense lawyer in a major metropolitan area near you, call him or her, spend the $1000 on an appointment and find out precisely what to do and what not to do. What should you be asking the lawyer provided to you by the insurance company. Get a second opinion before the action gets heavy. Then you will know what to worry about and what to put aside. Which is where you should put this book.

Rating:
Summary: Must reading for the health care provider
Review: I was given this book as a gift. It is entertaining as well as informative. This is a must-read for anyone in the health care profession today.