Search For Anesthesiology Specialty Board Review Questions @ Amazon.com
|
QUESTIONS TO ASK THE DEFENDANT DOCTOR WARNING: 1. Most lawyers ask the same boring questions at the beginning of each deposition: a. State your name and address Comment: OK, this is fine, but very boring and very expected by defense counsel and the doctor. Mix it up a bit. I advocate never starting a doctor’s deposition this way. Why not go right to the heart of the case with the very original question? You may always get the doctor’s credentials later or at the end. Besides, the credentials are ordinarily found online or in a curriculum vitae, and don’t help except to establish where he went to school and whether he’s board certified in any specialty. On more than one occasion the doctor has been disoriented by this approach. They are commonly prepared for questions in a lock-step manner and do not suppose something so unusual, but legally permissible set of questions right off the bat. 2. Go ahead- ask why they operated on the defective side of the brain as your initial question. “Objection, no foundation,” says the defense attorney. “So where does it say in the CPLR I need to lay a foundation question?” Despite this interchange of ‘ideas’, if you get such an objection, then plainly ask: a. “Didn’t you operate on my client on this date?” 3. I always advocate asking the ‘why’ question at deposition. It is much better to recognise the reasons why a doctor did or didn’t so something now, rather than save the question for trial. At trial, the reason may be ravaging to our case, and if so, I want to recognise in regards to it now. Besides, when you question a doctor at trial, as an averse witness, you never want to ask a question in which you don’t recognise the answer. If you do, you subject yourself, your client and your case to inherent risks that could jeopardize the case. 4. Make the doctor read his notes into the record. This is primary for any person who is attempting to decipher the doctor’s handwriting later on. Your expert will unquestionably need to recognise whether the scribble is important, and the only way to do that is if the doctor explains, on the record, what his scribble means. 5. Be polite. At all times. You can’t imagine how some lawyers don’t listen to this recommendation. They think they know it all, are sarcastic, belligerent, annoying, and genuinely annoy everyone in the room. The doctor’s attitude in responding changes as well. No longer is the doctor as verbose. No longer does the doctor look like the perpetrator. Rather, he might begin to look like a victim if attacks versus him and his believability are kept up. 6. You may still make all your points without being hostile, angry, yelling or screaming. The old saying ‘you get more with honey than with vinegar’ speaks volumes. Naturally, you’re not going to bend over and sweet talk your way to getting the doctor’s admissions when it comes to how he screwed up. But, the key is being professional and knowledgeable. You gain more respect from your adversary- (don’t worry regarding respect or lack of it from the doctor) by being respectful than you do if you are antagonistic. 7. There are times when you want to rile the physician. You want to recognise if you may push his buttons. You want to know how effortlessly it is to rankle his composure. If it’s easy to do at deposition, your trial system toward this witness just got that much easier. 8. Find out when it comes to conversations the doctor had with the patient, family members and other doctors. Remember, conversations are seldom recorded in a hospital record. Make sure you ask the doctor to affirm or deny remarks that your client has testified about. Most often, the doctor will assert they no longer recall the conversation. But, if your client does, it’s much more possible that the speech occurred. If the doctor denies making sure comments, then you know you have dissimilar facts when it comes to the same conversation, and a jury will have to ultimately determine who is telling the truth. 9. Ask whether the doctor has ever had his license to exercise medicine suspended and/or revoked. a. Ask whether their hospital privileges have ever been suspended or provoked. b. Always ask whether the doctor has given testimony before. i. Ask whether it was an an expert for plaintiff or defendant 10. In New York, in a medical malpractice deposition, you must ask opinion questions. The doctor- as a defendant is required to answer ‘expert’ questions and give answers in regards to his medical opinions. a. Do you have an opinion, with a reasonable degree of medical prospect whether the treatment rendered to Mrs. X was suitable and within the standard of care? b. If you have an opinion, what is that opinion? c. Confront the doctor with other views in the medical community that disagree with his school of thought and ask what he thinks of those opinions. d. Ask the doctor to confess to sure facts- Here’s an example: i. Isn’t it true the patient got Ex-lax at 10 p.m.? ii. Isn’t it true that persons who requires medical care with colon tumors shouldn’t get ex-lax? iii. Are there any circumstances when you would prescribe this medication for a patient who had this tumor? iv. Would you agree that if the patient got ex-lax at 10 pm that would be a departure from good care? v. Would you agree that the only reason the patient suffered injury was because she got ex-lax at 10 pm? vi. Would you agree that had she not gotten the ex-lax at 10 pm, she wouldn’t have suffered the bowel perforation? 11. Make sure you rule out other potential causes of injury besides the malpractice that you are claiming occurred here. The reason you do this is to learn the potential defense to your case. The defense will always come up with a heap of comprehensible statement as to why your argument is not valid. Better you ought to learn it for the duration of the deposition than to head to trial without knowing what their defense will be. 12. Ask a good deal of open ended questions. Ask who/ what/ where/ when/ why/ how. By doing this, you will get the doctor to talk and explain. If the doctor’s is going on and on without directly answering the question- and his attorney is letting him- that’s ok. Let him keep talking; you might in truth get a lot of utile information. When he stops talking merely say “Maybe my question wasn’t clear doctor. What I was looking for was….can you answer that question?” Always take the blame if the doctor says the question is not clear. Don’t respond to him by asking “What didn’t you comprehend with regards to my English language question?” 13. Ask with regards to medical definitions. a. What is an endocervical curettage? 14. Ask whether they’ve reviewed any medical creative writing of recognized artisti value or textbooks prior to coming to the deposition. a. Did you fetch any with you? 15. Finally, but not last, ask regarding credentials, schooling, licensing, board certification- but you ought to already have this info before your deposition when you exploration the defendant doctor. I always advocate doing a Google search on the physician to see if they’ve authored anything or if there’s anything out there online that’s suitable knowing. I lately learned from an online search where the defendant doctor was fired from his residency and sued the chairman of his department. Needless to say, this data proved very utile at deposition. ___________________________ There have been a lot of books written regarding how to conduct depositions. The most essential factor regarding taking a doctor’s deposition has, in my opinion, been the experience of the attorney doing the questioning. Anyone may read from a list of prepared questions. It takes an experienced attorney to listen to the answers and recognise where you want to go and then give rise to a system on how to get there while protecting your client’s rights to the best of your ability. |
Similar Products To Anesthesiology Specialty Board Review Questions