Medics cannot be expected to foresee fatal symptoms, court rules

Medics who fail to carry out routine tests cannot be expected to foresee a risk of death, the Court of Appeal has ruled, after an optometrist who failed to spot a schoolboy's fatal condition had her manslaughter conviction overturned. Honey Rose, 35, did not notice that seven-year-old Vincent Barker had swollen optic discs - a symptom of fluid on the brain - when she examined him at a branch of Boots in Ipswich. He died five months later and she was subsequently found guilty of gross negligence manslaughter, given a two-year suspended prison term and ordered to carry out 200 hours of community service.

But her conviction was quashed on appeal after judges ruled that while there had been a "serious breach of duty," it did not constitute the crime of gross negligence manslaughter. Sir Brian Leveson, sitting alongside two other judges, ruled that Rose could not possibly have known that Vincent was suffering from a long-standing, chronic problem when she conducted a routine eye test.
He said it was therefore inappropriate take into account what she would have known but for her breach of duty, which was the failure to properly to examine the back of Vincent’s eyes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/31/optometrist-failed-spot-brain-condition-wins-appeal-against/

That's the problem with trying to us criminal law in what are essentially civil matters.

And that's why every type of medical profession here in the US makes you fill out shed load of paperwork about every single medical issue that you or up to your great grandparents have/had, so you can't sue them if they fail to find/act on a symptom.