Three new complaints have been added in recent days against a gynecologist at Tenon hospital, in Paris, for verbal and physical violence. Michel Ledoux is a lawyer, specialist in health law, in Paris.
franceinfo: Can a patient refuse a treatment or a medical procedure that is offered to him?
Michel Ledoux : Yes, any medical act or any treatment requires the free and informed consent of the patient. The doctor must inform the patient about his condition, about the investigations and the care he will offer him, about the frequent or serious risks of the medical act.
If you consider yourself a victim of medical violence, what are the remedies?
We must first refer it to the management of the establishment where the violence was committed. There is also the possibility of submitting an ethics complaint to the Order of Physicians. And then you must first contact an association. There are associations of victims which are very competent which have doctors and lawyers who can guide the victim.
If the facts relate to a criminal qualification, sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, the victim may file a complaint at a police station or a gendarmerie or refer directly to the public prosecutor, who may decide on an investigation, and if at the end from this investigation, prosecutions can be carried out, the offending doctor will be referred to the criminal court, or even to an assize court in the event of rape, and will be condemned to a criminal sanction.
Behind this arises the question of reparation, and there are two situations. Either we are faced with a medical error, a failed operation or an incorrect diagnosis, the victim will have to demonstrate a fault, and therefore the first thing to do is to contact a specialist doctor who will verify that the planned procedure is serious and that it has a chance of success.
Hence the interest of going through an association which has doctors who will already check the possibility of obtaining satisfaction. Then the victim will have the choice. Either it can seize the regional commission of conciliation and compensation, which supposes being able to justify six months of continuous work stoppage. Or the victim will go to court. The judicial tribunal, if the acts were committed in a clinic, or the administrative tribunal, if it is in the hospital.
Are these long, difficult procedures, are patients often listened to?
Yes, the experts are honest people and if there is a medical error, the expert will point it out. But it can be very long. If you go to the CRCI, they have to come up with something within six months.
There is another situation, it is in the event of a medical hazard, of a therapeutic accident. Sometimes there is a problem, but no one is really responsible. We can then seize the Oniam, which within six months, after an expertise will take a position. There will be the recognition of the medical accident and the assessment of the damages.