PROFESSIONAL MEDICAL NEGLIGENCE AND THE CONSUMER QUESTION IN NIGERIA: THE JOURNEY SO FAR

This work set out to look at the malignant issues of professional medical negligence and the consumer question in Nigeria. The work adopted the doctrinal legal research approach; by engaging the incidence of medical negligence and how it impacts the patients who are usually at the receiving end of the acts of negligence. The work adopts the primary judicial and legal authorities along with common law rules in the discourse of the medical negligence; which are supported, as necessary, with secondary authorities, such as opinions of learned writers, as expounded in texts, articles and other media. The work also looked at the concept of who a consumer is, and proffer reasons why the patient should be treated as a consumer. Using the long-held principles of negligence in the law of torts, the work situated medical negligence as a species of negligence even though all the ingredients needed to prove general negligence are also applicable. The work also looked at the factors that inhibit consumers of medical services from seeking to exercise their rights to redress. Findings from the work include the fact that medical negligence exists and patients who are usually consumers of medical services are usually the victims and the acts are not usually dealt with decisively. The work looked at those factors and made recommendations amongst which is the need for a better protection regime for the consumers of medical services through the amendment of the Consumer Protection Council Law and an aggressive publicity of their activities so that the public should know that they can actually utilize their services to pursue cases of medical negligence.