Who Sues Their Doctors? How Patients Handle Medical Grievances

May and Stengel’s article “Who Sues Their Doctors? How Patients Handle Medical Grievances” describes a study of people who were dissatisfied in their medical treatment and the variables that may have led to their choice in dispute resolution. There are four options for the patients – lumping it (letting the issue go), exiting (leaving the doctor’s care), claiming (going to the doctor with the problem), or seeking a lawyer (looking to legal counsel and possibly taking legal action). The authors list variables – audiences, parties, seriousness of injury, and general resources – to see how they influence people who engage in each of the four choices. May and Stengel emerge with several patterns related to lawyer-seekers, or suers: they solicit advice from friends, including lawyer friends, on their potential case; they believe they have a serious medical injury; they do not have much knowledge in the health care world; they have fewer resources (money, class, power). The article concludes that while these findings tell us about the circumstances of the people who sue medical practitioners, the study could be taken further, to look for variables that are linked to lawsuits that do or do not come to fruition.

What intrigued me in this article was what it did not say. While the authors find many points about suers and draw a vague picture in their conclusion, I found some of the other patterns to be interesting. Maybe they seem intuitive, but I thought they deserved mention. For one, lumpers (or, as the article calls them, lumpits) had the most litigation experience. The authors make note of it and feel that this might be due to disillusionment with the system, such as its timeliness and effectiveness (or lack thereof). Lumpers also had the least knowledge of the health care world but the highest education level. This suggests that these people lump it because they do not know the rights they have legally, within the health care system. While it is tempting to suggest that their level of education contributes to their disenchantment with the system, the Ewick and Sibley piece, as well as articles on naming, blaming, and claiming, indicates that people of various education and socioeconomic levels are discontented with the law. Rather, because lumpers have a higher level of education, their lack of health care knowledge might make them hesitate before seeking lawyers, since they may be learned but not in this area. Additionally, because of their level of education, they may be of higher socioeconomic status and do not want to be associated with the people who do sue their doctors. After all, May and Stengel found that lawyer-seekers tend to have fewer resources – money, class, and power – and lumpers may not want to deal with this label, nor the money-hungry shamelessness commonly associated with those who sue.