Once again we are very pleased to have been given the chance to update and
revise this book into a fourth edition. Health care legal and ethical issues continue
to dominate social and political agendas and the courts, as they have done
in the periods covered by all the previous editions of our book. Litigation in
health care is now a fairly constant feature of the NHS health care environment.
Not a week seems to pass without a case being sent to court. The popular media
in recent times have abounded with stories of things going wrong in hospitals
and elsewhere, where patients have been caused avoidable injury and sometimes
death. Nurses feature along with doctors in litigation and claims; and nurses
play a key role in making health care safe. Along with lots of other legal and
ethical issues and topics covered in this book, we consider the ways the Government
and the NHS have tried to grapple with the rising tide of health litigation,
and the risk management and patient safety strategies that have been put into
place to deal with this.