New medical responsibility between the changeable perimeter of criminal guilt and the challenges to doctor – ill therapeutical alliance in Italy.

Abstract

This article analyses the most salient changes made to the medical criminal liability by the Balduzzi law of 2012 and the recent law of Gelli – Bianco of 2017, trying to underline not only the positive and negative sides of such reforms, but also the path of change of the system of medical criminal liability, in the light of the findings emerged in jurisprudence and in the doctrine, taking into account the new and poignant challenges to the medical-patient therapeutic alliance. It is therefore not only about balancing the protection of the right to health with the protection of the professionalism and serenity of the doctor, threatened by the increase in criminal litigation, while at the same time diminishing the spread of defensive medicine, but to evaluate the changes to the most suitable normative to favour (and rebuild) a positive therapeutic alliance between doctor and ill, today, instead increasingly undermined by a hyper contracting and bureaucratization that in fact make it increasingly weak.