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Medical Malpractice As Murder? Using Root Cause Analysis As A Guiding Framework For Criminal Medical Malpractice, Kinsey Novak Booth

West Virginia Law Review

Unprecedented criminal prosecutions for medical errors have increased throughout the nation: A Tennessee nurse was charged with reckless homicide for an isolated medication error; two South Carolina nurses were charged with criminal neglect for failing to change a wound dressing for just two days; and an Ohio pharmacist was charged with involuntary manslaughter for failing to detect that a solution contained too much sodium. Introducing criminal charges for cases of typical medical malpractice, which are most often the result of system failures, will dismantle hospitals’ error-reporting systems and lead to long-term catastrophic results for patient safety. This Note applies system …