Where do you see yourself five years from now? Working in a hospital? A private medical centre? Maybe even opening your own practice. But no matter what you’re planning to do, we bet that it doesn’t include having to deal with a malpractice complaint from your time as a resident doctor.
But without retrospective cover in your medical indemnity insurance, it’s more likely than you think.
Related content: Medical indemnity insurance in New Zealand
Why is retrospective insurance important?
Consider the following: medical treatment can take weeks, months or in some serious cases, years to resolve. Can you be on top form every single day for years at a time? Are you planning to avoid making even a small mistake for your entire tenure as a doctor?
If you’re ambitious, you might be nodding your head. But the reality is, doctors are people too. They make mistakes---and sometimes it can take years for that mistake to get noticed, and even longer for a patient to get angry enough to make a malpractice complaint about it.
A single misdiagnosis from your time as a resident doctor could follow you many, many years in the future.
What does retrospective insurance actually do?
That’s why retrospective medical indemnity insurance exists. Think of it like a pre-existing conditions waiver, except instead of your own health problems, it covers you for mistakes you may have made before you took on the cover.
Read more: The most common causes of medical errors and how to avoid them
With a retrospective policy in place, you get the indemnity insurance and the medicolegal support you need to cover your own costs as well as defend yourself at the Medical Tribunal if need be. Without it, you’ll have to pay out of your own pocket for that support.
An example
As a resident doctor, Dr Yu assisted in a fallopian tube ligation for a woman under the direction of her senior. A few years down the line, after Dr Yu has switched to a retrospective insurance policy, it is found that there was an issue with the surgery, and the woman has now become unexpectedly pregnant. She lays a complaint against Dr Yu, who then has to defend herself for a mistake that was made many years ago.
Thankfully, because she has retrospective medical indemnity insurance, she was given the support to be able to argue her case in front of the HDC and Medical Council with the help of medicolegal experts without having to pay out of her own pocket.
Summary
Retrospective insurance is important. Medical mistakes can take years to be discovered, and longer to be acted on. Don’t risk your future as a doctor. Look for retrospective insurance in your indemnity policy.
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