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“Support a lawyer. go to med school” The above message on the car bumper stickers of members of the medical profession reflects their reaction to the current escalation of malpractice suits filed by attorneys against doctors and hospitals. The impact of these suits against medical personnel and institutions is not limited to patients, doctors and lawyers; the ripple‐effect reaches the entire community, because the rising incidence of malpractice suits tends to increase the cost of malpractice insurance and ultimately the total cost of health care to all members of society. Malpractice is but a small, though highly visible, part of a broader spectrum of interaction between medicine and law. “The complexities of modern society are causing law and medicine to interface with increasing frequency to the extent that contact with the legal process has become an inescapable aspect of the physician's life.” In recognition of this increasing frequency of contacts between medicine and law, a correspondingly increasing number of medicolegal reference works have been published, as exemplified by the selective list which follows this introduction. These should be of direct interest to doctors and members of allied health professions, to attorneys and paralegals and, indirectly, to all who deal with medical personnel and institutions. Traditionally, attorneys, particularly members of the trial bar, have demonstrated a continuing interest in medical literature. For example, the Merck Manual and Goldstein's Medical Trial Technique are familiar to most trial lawyers. They are expected to be well acquainted with anatomy charts, texts on internal medicine, eye, ear, nose and throat, orthopedics, obstetrics, and pediatrics, to name but a few generic medical works of interest to trial lawyers. It should be noted that the lawyer's interest in medical literature is not necessarily motivated by a desire to harass doctors, nurses and hospitals. Attorneys are bound by their Code of Professional Responsibility to represent their clients competently and zealously. In discharging this ethical obligation, the attorney frequently calls upon a physician to testify as an expert witness concerning the cause of a personal injury or death. Consequently, the attorney should be knowledgeable in medical theory and terminology. Furthermore, in pursuit of interdisciplinary competence, a significant number of individuals in the United States have earned both the medical degree and the law degree and appropriate licenses to practice, e.g., Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., Director, Pittsburgh Institute of Legal Medicine, Duquesne Law School, member, Faculty of the Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Dentistry, Coroner, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

The purpose of this study is to determine the existing legal implications for medical negligence in India and recommending how open communication and empathy by the doctors can help prevent these implications.

This research is based on a qualitative method. Indian laws, Indian constitution, journal articles, books and other writings have been reviewed to develop this study.

There are many legal implications for medical negligence in India, and justice can be demanded under a number of Indian laws. This study also found that it is important to create awareness regarding the laws governing medical negligence through effective communication and empathy.

Extant literature discusses in detail the various laws related to medical negligence and few talk about creating awareness about these laws amongst people, and while some researchers understand the importance of sensitizing health professionals of the nitty-gritty of the legal implication governing medical negligence, none provides a framework of medical negligence with the help of sensitizing health professionals through communication. This study fills the gap by focusing on prevention than cure.

The purpose of this paper is to give a review on the developments leading to the 2017 law on the medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids in Germany, and to present the major advances arising from this law for the supply of patients with cannabis-based drugs and its major limitations.

This paper used an Analysis of the major political statements and documents as well as court decisions of the past 20 years, which can be regarded as the major steps of this development.

Since 1998, when dronabinol/THC was made available in Germany on prescription there have been continuous improvements of the access to cannabis-based medicines. The law of 2017, which made cannabis flowers available to patients on a doctor’s prescription and forced health insurers to pay for a treatment under certain circumstances was a major step. However, many patients, who profit from a treatment with cannabis still do not get access.

The German law on the medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids of 2017 is unique in its kind in the world. Compared to the legal framework in other countries it has several disadvantages, for example with regard to the high prices of cannabis flowers (€20-€25 per gram), and several advantages, for example with regard to the role of health insurers.

In order to better understand how collections are used, this study aims to present a large‐scale analysis of usage patterns for non‐core monographs in the collections of fourteen general academic libraries of varying sizes.

Using Spectra Dimension, a collection analysis tool, this study compares use data from multiple academic libraries.

It appears that general academic libraries are overinvesting in legal materials and perhaps underinvesting in medical materials.

This study suggests that analysis of use data from multiple libraries may help individual libraries better understand their own collecting needs. Local issues may, however, override the broad patterns identified here.

In lean budgetary times, understanding collection use is key to making informed decisions about resource allocation for collection development. Libraries may be able to use these data to better manage their own materials budgets and collecting practices.

Though there have been a number of large‐scale analyses of collections, most have relied on sampling or have compared small portions of collections, and few have compared use across libraries. This study analyzes collection use across many institutions at a level of detail not possible before the introduction of multi‐library collection analysis tools.

The purpose of this paper to examine laws and regulations applicable to cannabis in the USA and the UK, including legal reforms and international treaty obligations.

This study relies on primary data from statutes and secondary data from online and offline resources, including relevant case studies.

Federal laws in the USA and existing UK cannabis legal regime generally prohibit recreational use of cannabis. Increasingly, various individual states in the USA have enabled the use of cannabis health-related uses, thereby challenging the status of the UN treaties on drug enforcement. As the USA struggles to reconcile the conflicts between federal law on cannabis and individual states within its borders, much of the rest of the world, including the UK, are struggling with how best to reconcile their domestic positions with their UN treaty obligations.

Recent disclosures of past recreational use of prohibited drugs by several candidates vying to be the UK Prime Minister suggests why understanding the laws governing the use of cannabis is useful and relevant to the general public.

This paper provides a general but integrated review of national laws in the USA and the UK, as well as international treaties governing the use of cannabis.

Clinical guidelines from National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) have been developed by a rigorous process using the highest‐level evidence base. Their objectives are to reduce the variations in clinical care and end the postcode lottery of healthcare delivery. They are backed strongly by the government's agenda, are expected to be implemented and to be monitored, and this is to be monitored by CHAI. Up until now, clinical guidelines have had a secondary status to expert witness testimony in determining the standard of care in law in medical litigation. However, guidelines from NICE may have a more influential role in determining the standard of care in law by setting the standard of expected clinical practice. Trusts need to be sensitive to this as part of their risk management strategy. Trusts should facilitate the implementation of guidelines from NICE and audit their use through the framework of clinical governance. In the rare event that a trust should decide to positively diverge from such guidelines, it should do so only through a mechanism of due process that is required in public law for the accountability of the reasonableness of such a decision.

Human trafficking (HT) for sex and labor services is among the fastest growing criminal enterprises, causing significant physical and psychological morbidity to victims. Although many survivors encounter medical, legal and social work professionals during their captivity, lack of awareness of HT in these fields results in under-recognition of victims. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary educational conference on raising awareness of HT in these fields.

A single-day educational conference on HT was hosted in Miami, Florida. Participants were recruited from medical, law enforcement, social work and political fields. The research team issued a ten-item HT survey at the start and end of the conference. Results were analyzed for improvement in survey score using an exact Wilcoxon sign rank test. The results were analyzed both as a single cohort and stratified by profession.

For all participants, there was a significant improvement in post-survey score (0.355, p < 0.05). When stratified by profession, significant improvement was noted in the legal subgroup (0.561, p < 0.05). No significant changes were noted for the other individual professional cohorts, although all subgroups trended toward improvement.

A multi-disciplinary educational conference may be effective in raising awareness of HT. Further research is needed to determine the effect of increased awareness on actual outcomes for trafficking survivors.

This study represents unique, original research which provides valuable data as to the effectiveness of educational conferences on raising awareness of HT for professionals with the best opportunity to make meaningful interventions.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of social work professional evidence in mental capacity law, specifically Court of Protection proceedings. The authors analyse how social workers perform as evidence givers in this domain and how social work as a profession is perceived alongside other professions within the context of adult social care decision-making in mental capacity law.

This paper draws on textual evidence from judgments and existing empirical data published elsewhere. The authors consider the contribution of social work professional expertise to best interests decision-making in formal legal proceedings which, in turn, reflects on how social work expertise is relevant in everyday practice.

The findings of this paper include that social workers are well placed to be experts on best interests decision-making in mental capacity law. However, the authors show that the Court of Protection has not always endorsed this form of social work expertise in its judgments, meaning that social workers can struggle to articulate an expert knowledge base.

Overall, the authors conclude that social work evidence is incredibly valuable as expertise about the person’s best interests, particularly in the domain of welfare cases and care planning.

The purpose of this paper is to find the key innovative principles for evaluating the long-term care (LTC) cloud system by exploring contradictory and complex points in its development.

The theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ) and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) approaches are integrated to resolve complex contradictions in the system. The heuristic reasoning of TRIZ is applied to obtain innovation principles for an LTC cloud mining system. However, the importance and feasibility of these innovative principles require further assessment. In this study, DEMATEL is employed to clarify the complex relationships among the principles and evaluate their key influences.

This paper identifies six primary contradictions and derives 25 innovative principles for the resolution of these conflicts. Further analysis confirms three key innovative principles. First, the government should consider the overall planning of the cloud system platform, followed by the participation of other medical and LTC institutions. Second, the information capability of LTC institutions should be unified by recording the pathology data of care recipients to create an information exchange system. Third, LTC institutions should act in cooperation with medical institutions to provide professional medical capabilities.

The contributions of this paper are two-fold. First, this study provides an integrated methodology integrating the TRIZ and DEMATEL approaches to resolve LTC problems. Second, this research identifies the key innovative principles for developing an LTC cloud system in Taiwan.