Medical Negligence Litigation is Not the Problem

The medical malpractice insurance crisis results not from out-of-control juries or overly-litigious plaintiffs and their attorneys, but rather is simply the result of epidemic levels of negligence among physicians. The myth that the liability system is to blame for high premiums facing doctors creates opportunities for insurance companies to restrict plaintiffs\u27 access to courtrooms and to limit the amount of compensation they may receive after proving negligence. This article examines and debunks the leading myths regarding the so-called crisis and presents several suggestions that may improve the healthcare provided to patients nationwide

Apologia pro vita mea: an intellectual odyssey. Part One

This is a narrative in a dialogue form in which the author, now an octogenarian, describes his intellectual evolution from a published laboratory researcher to engagement in the full-time clinical practice of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy. He reviews the development of his ideas through his many publications and offers commentaries on the nature of the origin, environment and content of his thinking at the time each of these were written. In the current article, part one of several projected articles, he covers the period from 1953, when he received his medical and research training and published his first papers, through 1965, when he resigned his positions of Chief of Psychiatry at the Veterans’ Research Hospital in Chicago and co-director of the Psychiatry Resident Training Program at the Northwestern University Medical School and entered full-time clinical work while continuing teaching psychodynamic psychotherapy at Northwestern University.</jats:p