Medical practitioner's legal regulations in the practice from urban-rural development perspective

Rıga Stradiņš University, Faculty of Law, Riga, Latvia

^* Corresponding author: karina.palkova@inbox.lv

Abstract

The role of medical practitioners in community safety area is huge. Especially huge responsibility medical practitioners have in medical treatment process from the point of view of treatment quality and legal liability. Medical practitioners are professionals regardless of territoriality. The mission and functions they perform do not depend on practice place. The responsibility is equal in both urban and rural level. To protect community safety from the medical practitioners' perspectives they should know their own rights, as well as patient's rights in healthcare. From the particular legal regulations arise duties and responsibilities of medical practitioners, which are described in the paper. The aim of the research is to study legislation that regulates medical practitioner‘s rights and duties in Latvia. The task of the paper is to study the characteristics of rights of medical practitioners in Latvia and the medical practitioner's knowledge of patients' rights in Latvia. In the research, the author has used general scientific methods such as analysis, synthesis, modelling, comparative method, inductive and deductive method, methods of interpretation of legal norms – grammatical, teleological, historical, as well as empirical method – survey. The paper describes the most important legal regulations in medical practitioner's activity, as well as defines problems and provides potential solutions that are necessary to protect community's safety. The results of the paper show that the regulatory framework exists in the field of healthcare of Latvia. Also in the field of professional activity, legal regulations exist, which govern the professional activity of medical practitioners. They are included in various law sectors (civil rights, labour rights, criminal rights, etc.). Apart from that, there exist a large number of legislative regulations of national level, which govern the professional activities of medical practitioners (special laws and Cabinet Regulations). It should be noted, that the competences of medical practitioners are not consolidated, but stipulated in separate legislative provision for each group of medical practitioners (for a doctor, doctor's assistant, nurse, etc.). The medical practitioner's knowledge of patients' rights is not good enough, especially in rural areas of Latvia.