Session outline
- The medicolegal assessment of people who have experienced acute / chronic disability following personal injury is a common process across the world. However, individual countries and regions can have widely different systems of assessment and decision making in who receives benefits. One factor with the capacity to influence determination of disability and compensation is how assessments are completed.
- In this presentation the speakers will address the difficulties medical experts experience while assessing patients and writing medico-legal reports, both in Europe and Australia.
- To understand the difficulties experts experienced in the Netherlands, the speaker will give a short overview of the Dutch (compensation) system and the role of the medical expert within this system.
- Furthermore, you will learn more about the history of the Dutch way of handling claims in litigation (and disability/workers compensation), the position of the medical experts within this system and the method they have developed to insure a more transparent, systematic and standardized approach to assessing clients in a medico-legal environment. This system aims to produce fair and comparable results for similar cases.
Learning outcomes
- Knowledge about various methods in medicolegal assessments in Europe and Australia
- Be aware of the pitfalls in medico-legal assessments
- See how a more structured approach could benefit the outcome
- Acquire tools for writing a structured report
- Learn about the way experts are trained and certified in the Netherlands
Target audience
- Medical practitioners
- Treating physicians
- General public