İnvestigation of malpractice lawsuits submitted to judgment in Türkiye: A qualitative research

This study aims to define the juridical relationship between patients and physicians/healthcare organizations in Türkiye, analyze the legal basis of liability in medical malpractice cases by examining court decisions. It is aimed to determine the legislation applied in medical malpractice cases and to create a scientific case law on this issue. The research employs qualitative content analysis as its methodology. First of all, court decisions have been determined through keywords determined as a result of literature search. Thanks to this, 617 court rulings included in the database have been reached. The court rulings are divided into three groups: constitutional , administrative, judicial jurisdiction. Court decisions were analyzed by creating main themes and sub-themes. The results of the analysis show that in practice, the liability arising from medical malpractice in the relationship between the patient and the physician is most commonly evaluated on the basis of a power of attorney agreement. However, the surrogacy agreement cannot adequately meet the unique structure of the relationship in any case and for this reason, it has been found that it is often applied in a mixed form together with other types of contracts and liability regimes. In this context, it becomes evident that the treatment contract defining the relationship between the patient and the physician is sui generis. It is considered that establishing a clear legal framework to explicitly regulate the treatment contract would be beneficial both for legal certainty and for clarifying the scope of the rights and obligations of patients and physicians.