We explain what malpractice is, how it differs from recklessness and negligence, and various examples.
What is malpractice?
Lack of expertise is the lack of expertise when it comes to doing something, that is, it is the lack of wisdom, practice, experience either ability. If someone performs an action with inexperience, it means that he does it without being well prepared for it, either because he lacks the knowledge, the practice or the necessary ability to perform it correctly.
Therefore, things done inexpertly tend to go wrong, or at least not the way they were expected to go.
The term malpractice comes from the Latin imperitia, voice built from the negative prefix in- and of peritus (“proven” or “specialist”).
Therefore, inexperience would become more or less synonymous with inexperience, inability or ignorance. It is a widely used term in legal and administrative language: in the civil law, for example, actions committed with negligence usually lead to economic compensation for the injured party.
As an example, suppose a person requires urgent medical attention. He goes to a nursing student who, although with good intentions, decides that the situation is serious and the patient must be operated on immediately. As soon as the operation begins, the patient dies, without the trainee nurse knowing very well what went wrong.
The relatives of the deceased can take the trainee nurse to justice and claim that he acted negligently, since he undertook a life-or-death operation for which he not only is not certified, but he does not even have the knowledgenor the practice. Justice, then, would have to determine how the relatives of the deceased will be compensated and what punishment the apprentice nurse will have to face.
Imprudence, recklessness and negligence
Malpractice is a legal concept that can be aggravated by two others, of a similar nature, which are recklessness and negligence.
- Malpractice is the lack of preparation and knowledge, skills or resources to undertake an action in the correct manner or with the best chance of success. success. This concept applies even if you have good intentions. For example: a person who decides to drive a tractor with no idea how it's done and ruins an important crop.
- Recklessness is the lack of caution when doing something. Therefore, even people prepared, trained and empowered to carry out an action can incur it, since it is the result of hasty actions, which assume risks unnecessary or do not take due precautions into account. For example: someone who, knowing that he has had several drinks of alcohol, decides to drive his car and causes a fatal accident.
- The negligence It consists of committing actions without taking into account the due rigor, the necessary precautions or rigorous considerations, despite being informed of them and knowing what the consequences may be. For example: a doctor who prescribes a drug with a very allergic effect to a patient, without first asking if she has allergies or doing the proper tests, and instead of helping the drug, it kills the patient.
Examples of malpractice
Some examples of malpractice conduct may be the following:
- Dad, who doesn't know anything about electronics, decides to take apart the failing TV control; by the time he finishes putting it back together, the remote has completely stopped working and he needs to buy a new one.
- A friend, a carpenter's apprentice, assured me that plumbing was not much different from carpentry and tried to fix a drain. Instead of doing it, he ended up breaking it completely.
- Instead of going to the doctor to cure a flu, I was taking antibiotics on my own, not knowing that antibiotics do nothing to viruses.