Current medico-legal issues -- a psychiatrist's view

The present challenges in medicine indicate clearly that a fuller partnership between patient and doctor is being evolved, without secret or unshared clauses. When a satisfactory relationship develops, it not only satisfies medico-legal requirements, but also fulfills the basic needs of excellent practice. The education of the patient and his family is an important part of the treatment process. The physician must consider and evaluate symptom, disease, and the patient as a person. It is the failure to establish a balanced equilibrium of these elements in any program of patient care, which give rise to crisis in patient-physician relationships, from which legal actions originate.