Medical malpractice: A review on graduate theses in the national thesis center

Medical malpractice, which has a history dating back thousands of years, is an issue that needs to be examined in a wide range, as it is one of the subjects of professional disciplines such as health and law and is closely related to ethics and law. In this study, it is aimed to define different concepts such as medical error, medical malpractice, complication that are encountered in the literature and used in the definition of medical malpractice, and to address the place of medical malpractice in academic literature by systematically examining theses in the National Thesis Center. This study was conducted using retrospective, descriptive and review methods. As a data collection tool, postgraduate theses containing the determined keywords related to medical malpractice and published in the National Thesis Center were examined. Statistically, numbers and percentage values were used. In the searches conducted with the keywords determined regarding medical malpractice in the National Thesis Center (Medical error, Malpractice, Medical malpractice, Medical practice error, Practice error, Faulty practice, Faulty medical practice, Faulty medical intervention, Bad practice, Complication), 350 theses registered from 2000, which is the date of the earliest encountered thesis, until the end of 2022 were included in the study. 350 theses included in the study were examined in the form of graphs and tables according to their types, research methods, publication years and the fields of their authors. When examined according to the number of theses, it was determined that 91 theses were written in the field of nursing, 86 theses in the field of law and 71 theses in the field of health management. There are six theses in the field of medical history and ethics. In the study, it was determined that the academic fields that are more interested in medical malpractice are nursing, law, health management and forensic medicine. It was concluded that the surgical branches in the high-risk group have very low interest in this subject in their thesis studies. Keywords: Medical error, medical malpractice, medical ethics, patient safety, graduate theses