Doctors as Good Samaritans: Some Empirical Evidence Concerning Emergency Medical Treatment in Britain
| Published date | 01 June 2003 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00256 |
| Date | 01 June 2003 |
| Author | Kevin Williams |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 30, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2003
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 258–82
Doctors as Good Samaritans: Some Empirical Evidence
Concerning Emergency Medical Treatment in Britain
Kevin Williams*
This paper reports the results of the first survey of British doctors’
attitudes towards the provision of emergency treatment outside the
usual confines of a surgery or hospital. The experience and perceptions
of NHS doctors practising in Sheffield concerning Good Samaritan
behaviour are discussed against the background of the rather
uncertain common law of medical rescue. The implications of the
survey’s findings for the direction of legal policy and the promotion of
medical altruism are also considered. Despite the alleged deterioration
in standards of social responsibility, the potentially fraught nature of
such interventions, and the theoretical possibility of legal liability
should any rescue attempt go badly, it seems that the overwhelming
majority of doctors (in this survey, at least) are willing Samaritans.
INTRODUCTION
From time to time the media highlight some shocking incident said to
illustrate the callous indifference (or worse) of modern society. In the
immediate aftermath of the death of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor in
November 2000, questions were asked about the alleged failure of passers-by
to go to his aid as he lay bleeding helplessly in a south London street. The
then Home Secretary took the opportunity to condemn what he called ‘the
walk on by culture’
1
– a culture the common law appears to endorse.
It is commonplace for tort texts to instruct readers that, whatever moral
decency may require, there is no legal duty to act as a Good Samaritan by
going to the aid of a stranger in distress, and that this is so no matter how
258
ßBlackwell Publishing Ltd 2003, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Law Division, Sheffield Hallam University, 51–53 Broomgrove Road,
Sheffield S10 2BP, England
Thanks are due to the Journal’s anonymous referees for their helpful comments. The
usual disclaimer applies.
1 Jack Straw, quoted in the Guardian, 30 November 2000.
grave the emergency or how easy it would be to render effective assistance.
2
Unsurprisingly, critics have doubted the social desirability of this ‘no duty’
rule,
3
which in England apparently now goes so far as to excuse certain
failures by the emergency services to undertake properly (or at all) the duties
they are paid from public funds to perform.
4
In contrast, doctors have at least a professional responsibility to go to the
aid of anyone in nearby need of emergency medical care, regardless of
whether the casualty is an existing patient or a stranger. All registered
practitioners are bound by the General Medical Council’s (GMC) ethical code
which declares that ‘In an emergency, wherever it may arise, you must offer
anyone at risk the assistance you could reasonably be expected to provide’.
5
In
this latest version, the nature of the duty has been redefined (and, arguably,
expanded) by substituting the word ‘assistance’ for ‘treatment’.
6
The phrase
‘wherever it may arise’ has also been added in order to make it clear that the
obligation is not restricted to emergencies arising in this country or to those
occurring on professional premises, such as a surgery or hospital. Failure to
comply with the code renders the doctor liable to a charge of serious
professional misconduct.
7
In this sense, it may be said that doctors are not
fully volunteers and that altruism is a compulsory core value.
Whether doctors additionally have a legal duty to help a needful stranger is
a question the answer to which, it will be suggested later, is less clear-cut than
was once assumed to be the case. Meanwhile, we should note that the
contractual position of General Practitioners (GPs) and hospital doctors
259
2 See, for example, W.V.H. Rogers (ed.), Winfield and Jolowicz on Tort (16th edn.,
2002) 134, citing Lord Diplock in Dorset Yacht Co Ltd v. Home Office [1970] A.C.
1004, 1060: ‘the priest and the Levite would have incurred no civil liability in English
law’.
3 See, for example, A.L. Linden, ‘Rescuers and Good Samaritans’ (1971) 34 Modern
Law Rev. 241.
4 See, for example, Capital and Counties plc v. Hampshire CC [1997] Q.B. 1004
(limited duty on fire brigade once it has elected to fight a fire), OLL v. Secretary of
State for Transport [1997] 3 All E.R. 897 (no duty on coastguard co-ordinating air-
to 999 call).
5 General Medical Council, Good Medical Practice (3rd edn., 2001) para. 9. Similar
ethical declarations can be found in the medical codes of other common law
jurisdictions, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United States of America.
6 The earlier version of Good Medical Practice (2nd edn., 1998) para. 4, reads ‘In an
emergency, you must offer anyone at risk the treatment you could reasonably be
expected to provide’. Presumably ‘assistance’ extends beyond treatment to include
other help, such as calling the emergency services.
7 See Medical Act 1983, s. 35. R.G. Smith, Medical Discipline (1994), provides a
detailed analysis of the professional conduct jurisdiction of the GMC up to 1990 but
cites no examples of neglect charges other than in relation to existing patients. My
own search of the minutes of the Professional Conduct Committee for the years 1990–
2001 identified only one charge grounded on a failure to provide emergency
treatment to a non-patient. In 1997, a locum GP was ‘admonished’ for refusing to
attend an elderly man who had collapsed in the street outside the surgery.
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