Although it appears that the methods of medicine cannot be approached from a legal perspective, the law--as a code of conduct--establishes requirements for the effectiveness of treatment and standards for decision-making in healthcare. Central provisions of the relevant law relate to extraordinarily vague legal concepts, taking recourse to knowledge based on experience scattered across the profession. However, the sometimes explosive dissemination of new--heterogeneous or specific--knowledge and an increasing specialisation of treatment approaches very much relativise the importance of medical experience. This has promoted the rise of a professional evidence-based knowledge management in medicine, to which the law--especially case law--has only partially responded so far.
Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier GmbH.