The Surgeon as Expert Witness
26 November 2019
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The Surgeon as Expert Witness
RCS England have just published a guidance document entitled “The Surgeon as Expert Witness”. It is well written, comprehensive and provides some useful background references.
The Confederation of British Surgery (CBS) welcomes this publication and is happy to endorse its’ content. However, CBS considers that an important outstanding issue not addressed in this document is how to select experts and how to maintain standards of expert testimony.
There is now increasing recognition that expert testimony is often unreliable ( see: “What to do if an ‘expert’ witness proves to be incompetent, J Ames, Nov 7thTimes) and on occasions positively dangerous ( see “The role of experts in the David Sellu trial. Robert Wheeler, https://publishing.rcseng.ac.uk/doi/pdf/10.1308/rcsbull.2017.122.)
CBS was recognised as a trade union committed to the welfare of surgeons in 2018. One of its declared strategic aims, which was accepted by the Certification office, was to establish a register of surgical experts and devise means by which expert testimony could be provided quickly, independently and accurately. These objectives are outlined in a document entitled “Surgical Expert” available on the website (www.cbsgb.co.uk).
In the current climate anyone can put themselves forward as a self-appointed “expert”. CBS considers this inappropriate. “Experts” should have expertise in legal proceedings as well as the clinical area they are being asked to comment upon. Our proposed register would address this anomaly.
Another proposal from CBS was that reports should be based on a joint statement from 2 or more recognised experts thereby ensuring consensus and moderation of extreme views. Regrettably NHS Resolution dismissed this idea as potentially too expensive.
The costs of litigation in the UK continue to spiral year on year and now impact on available resources for patient care. One reason for these increasing costs is the inefficient legal process which is unnecessarily prolonged causing undue stress to all concerned. Additionally, poor, biased and opinionated expert testimony often precludes expeditious settlement.
Our proposals would have gone some way to facilitating early settlement of cases and in our view would have resulted in considerable overall cost savings.
Professor John MacFie MD FRCS FRCP
November 2019
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