Criminal responsibility for medical error: a helpful or harmful mechanism for delivering patient safety?

16 Nov 2019

On November 15th 2019, Dr Mary Tumelty, School of Law, UCC, hosted a workshop entitled “Criminal Responsibility for Medical Error: A Helpful or Harmful Mechanism for Delivering Patient Safety?”

The workshop, which was funded by the Irish Research Council, brought together national and international experts in this area and facilitated an interdisciplinary knowledge exchange on the role of the criminal law in medical error, and its impact on patient safety.

Internal participants included: Professor Mary Donnelly (School of Law, UCC), Professor Deirdre Madden (School of Law, UCC), Dr Catherine O’Sullivan (School of Law, UCC), and Dr Chris Luke (Consultant in Emergency Medicine and Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Public Health, UCC).

External participants travelled from elsewhere in Ireland and the UK. These were: Dr Alexandra Mullock (University of Manchester), Professor Jose Miola (University of Leicester), Dr Melinee Kazarian (University of Southampton), Professor Jo Samanta (DeMonfort University), Dr Ash Samanta (Associate Medical Director, NHS England Central Midlands), Professor Sean Tierney (Royal College of Surgeons, Ireland), and Professor Anne-Maree Farrell (Queens University Belfast).

The workshop facilitated thought-provoking discussion on the topic of criminal law in medical error, and received fantastic feedback from participants, as evidenced below.