Responsabilidade penal médica: sina à sociedade do risco

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze the social risks resulting from post-modernization regarding medical practice, analized from the Critical Theory of World Risk Society, proposed by Ulrich Beck. We analized specifically the social risks of medical practice due to scientific and technological development and the legal-criminal intervention in the context of medical accountability regarding their labor acts. In order to answer the proposed objectives, a bibliographic research was carried out through a database survey with publications in Portuguese, English and Spanish. This article was organized in specific chapters that deal with medical ethics, medical errors, medical criminal liability and risk society and the doctor-patient relationship. In this context, the benefits and risks of technological and scientific development for the work of the physician became evident, as well as the need for caution in using the guidelines of the Defensive Medicine Guide that promotes the excessive use of diagnostic procedures as a way to protect doctors from possible crimnal proceedings. Thus, we can infer that medical professionals in the risk society must respect the patient's will and right to self-determination, aware that consent in relation to treatment will play an extremely important role in the doctor-patient relationship.