Gary Steinman, MD, PhD Dr. Steinman is Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Albert Einstein School of Medicine, Bronx, NY, and Chair, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, International American University College of Medicine, St. Lucia. He is a member of the ObGyn attending staff at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY, and at St. John’s Queens Hospital, Elmhurst, NY. Dr. Steinman is the coauthor of Womb Mates: A Modern Guide to Fertility and Twinning (2007).
The best way to avoid criminal prosecution is, of course, to practice good medicine. Quality medicine rests on the principle that caregivers respond to patients’ needs in a timely, appropriate manner. Your patients will, of course, come to the end of their life sooner or later. But patients in the hands of a good physician will not have that end hastened by disregard for sound medical practices.
In 1980, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court enunciated a standard for physicians that no honorable physician would have difficulty meeting: “A doctor will be protected,” the court said, “if he acts on a good faith judgment that is not grievously unreasonable by medical standards.”15
