La responsabilidad médica en Colombia

Abstract

This document is concerned with responsibility as a consequence of the relationship between an obligation and a right, in which the former has to do with a person who gives a service or complies with an instruction, and the latter applies not only to the person who in his capacity as a giver of instructions, can make that right respected, but also the person who finds himself in a certain situation and has to exercise it. Nobody can deny that a doctor, like any other professional, has to respond for his negligence and malpractice. The legal consequences of this are embraced in the Latin quotation “Artifex spondet peritiam artis” (the artisan responds for his art), which is a principle reflected in our own legislation when it says that by action or omission one causes injury or damage to another, in a situation involving blame or negligence, he/she is required to make good that damage.