Dental Negligence - Legal Provisions Under the Law (Part 2)

Any individual suffers with an injury which has been apparently caused following a dental proceedure or after dental treatment, this may constitute an act of dental negligence by the dentist.

The Supreme Court of India has had a detailed look on the act of negligence and framed the following guidelines for liabilities toward dental negligence

• Sense of Duty: A doctor is accountable when he sees the patient in an emergency and becomes duty bound when they agree to treat a patient.
• Delinquency of duty: Dentists are mainly responsible for such an act which has lead to an injury through a sequence of unacceptable dental procedures which may include minor surgical procedure like tooth extractions etc.
• Damage: The harm occurred because of dereliction of duty. Although a damage has occurred which is not life threatening, a patient cannot take any action under law against the doctor until and unless a doctor has deliberately committed an awful act costing patient to lose his/her livelihood. Thus, Patient has the liberty to approach the criminal court and defame the doctor for his obstinate conduct.
• Direct damage: The detrimental effects on a patient has resulted from direct dereliction of duty by the dentist.

The act of negligence can be performed deliberately or unintentionally by a doctor or a patient. In this scenario, if a duty bound dentist does any performance on the dental chair that would cause any harm, injury or death then the dentist is solely responsible for such an act provided he/she has a strong defence against such an unfortunate incident.

A patient is responsible for an act of negligence when the fail to follow the dentist's advice, makes their own decisions against the prescribed treatment and does not turn up for a recall or follow-up or fails to follow the medicines which he was asked to take regularly. In these circumstances, these laws made in our constitution were either of the aggrieved parties can claim damages via civil litigations or punish the wrongdoers with criminal liabilities. Usually, it’s very difficult to prove an act of negligence on either of the parties, but only if the dentist is proven guilty of an act which they have committed on a dental chair will they be liable for legal action.

Circumstances where a dentist can find themselves in an unfortunate situation

• Lack of communication and observation skills, where a dentist misses obtaining information during initial steps in case history recording
• Casual attitude of the dentist when a patient presents with them with medical conditions like uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension
• Lack of interpersonal skills, where a dentist is not able to take the patient into their confidence and perform certain steps which they may not be confident in
• Making wrong diagnosis and knowingly selecting poor cases for complete mouth rehabilitation just for the sake of monetary gain
• Going against the principles of dental ethics and working on targets, especially seen in chain of dental clinics
• Planning for dental surgeries in underprivileged hospital setups, which may lack proper sterilisation, cleanliness, nursing and medical staff for assistance
• Poor treatment planning and convincing patients to undergo dental surgeries without analysing the prognosis or outcome of the treatment. Especially noted under orthognathic surgeries and oral-nasopharyngeal cancer surgeries