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Message: [QUOTE="Nehanda, post: 28265, member: 2262"] You can take hospitals and doctors to court in Zimbabwe when they mess up your medical care. Both private and public medical centers face responsibility for mistakes their workers make. This includes every nurse and doctor working there. The law calls this "vicarious liability" - a fancy way of saying bosses must answer for employee mistakes that happen during work hours. All medical staff must take proper care of patients whether you signed papers with them or not. Zimbabwe's legal system expects doctors and nurses to act carefully through something called "the law of delict." When doctors don't check on patients quickly enough, or nurses make harmful mistakes, you can demand money for your suffering. Any healthcare place that offers treatment, testing, therapy, nursing, or other health services can face these lawsuits. Hospitals stay legally responsible for professional slip-ups their employees make on the job. Some experts claim hospitals aren't liable when independent doctors just use their facilities, but many disagree with this view. Even part-time doctors or contractors might still count as "staff" under the right circumstances. Lord Denning, an important judge, once stated that hospital authorities remain liable for negligence when they employ and pay the doctor rather than the patient paying directly. When surgeons perform operations incorrectly, they face personal blame for medical negligence. However, the hospital where they performed the surgery might also need to compensate hurt patients. The medical center can't easily dodge responsibility by claiming patients partly caused their problems. Zimbabwe's laws protect patients from shoddy healthcare by holding both individual practitioners and entire institutions accountable for serious medical errors. [/QUOTE]

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