Isabelle Le Gallez, Dr Liddell, Dr Skopek and Dr Fritz on Communicating Uncertainty in Medical Diagnoses

On Wednesday 2 September, Isabelle Le Gallez (LML research Associate) presented a paper on behalf of the wider legal Diagnosing Diagnosis team at the 111th Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference. The legal team includes Dr Kathy Liddell (Director of LML), Dr Jeff Skopek (Deputy Director of LML) and consultant physician and Wellcome Fellow, Dr Zoë Fritz.

The paper was titled ‘Communicating Uncertainty in Medical Diagnoses: Does Bolam or Montgomery Define the Standard of Care?’.

Patient diagnosis lies at the heart of the medical encounter and differs in important ways from medical treatment, yet it has received much less attention. In the legal field, this can be seen in the failure to consider whether the Bolam test that defines the standard of care for treatment applies equally to diagnosis. Judges, practitioners, and academics have merely assumed that it does. In the presentation, Isabelle and the legal team challenged this assumption. They highlighted that the act of diagnosis itself has three aspects that should be differentiated: the formation, communication to the patient, and recording of a diagnosis.  For each of these three aspects, a different test for negligence could potentially apply. Isabelle focused on communicating a diagnosis to the patient, and critically evaluated whether it should be governed by Bolam or Montgomery.  She analysed two cases—one from Singapore and one from Scotland—that illustrate diverging judicial approaches to this issue and the importance of settling this previously unexplored and emerging area of legal controversy.

This research is supported by the Health Foundation’s grant to the University of Cambridge for The Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute.

Venue: Online

Time: Tuesday 1 September – 9.15am.

More information on the broader Diagnosing Diagnosis project is available here.