«Defensive medicine»: critique of a successful concept

The recent years have seen increased public debate regarding medical malpractice litigation. Many commentators talk about the dangers to our health system of drifting into an American-style of litigation. Consequences of legal intervention on medical practices in France have not been examined yet to any great extent in the field of social sciences. The aims of this article are to re-examine the concept of «defensive medicine», a concept that appears in numerous American works on how litigation affects the behaviour of doctors, and which is now gaining ground in France, to develop an approach that will allow us to take these works a step further, and to analyse the results of our study on the subject. The study has been carried out in two sectors: haemophilia and anaesthesia-intensive care. Within these two areas, which differ in size, exposure to litigation and political history, we analyse the dynamics through which healthcare professionals have been faced with legal action and how they have reacted individually and collectively.