Corrigendum to: Medical Law: Exploring Doctors' Knowledge on the Laws Regulating Clinical and Medical Laboratories in Nigeria.

Abstract

Background: The Nigerian medical law is the embodiment of laws concerning the rights and responsibilities of medical professionals and their patients. It focuses on confidentiality, negligence, medical malpractice, ethics and criminal law.1 ,2 All medical professions (both core medical professions and allied health professions) in Nigeria are established by the Acts of parliament.3 Examples of such Acts are: Community Health Practitioners Act, Dangerous Drug Act, Medical Rehabilitation Act, Medical Laboratory Science Council of Nigerian (MLSCN) Act, Medical and Dental Practitioners Act (MPA), Nursing and Midwifery Act, Pharmacist Council of Nigerian Act and Radiographers Act. For the purpose of this research our focus would be limited to MLSCN and MP Acts.

The Acts of law in Nigeria is enshrined in her constitution which is a binding force on the authorities and people throughout the country to ensure peace, order and good operational governance.4 It gives an institution or profession a legal right to be established and operate in Nigeria.3 The Acts also serve as guidelines for the job roles of every profession, institution and establishment to prevent inter-professional conflicts.5 According to MLSCN Act, the laboratory where the Medical Laboratory Scientist carries out their specified analysis is known as Medical Laboratory. The Medical Laboratory is under the regulation of the Medical Laboratory Council of Nigeria. The job specification of the medical laboratory as clearly spelt out on section 29 of the MLSCN Act, is for production, sales, importation and storage of medical laboratory reagents and production of diagnostic devices.6 The Medical and Dental Practitioner Act identifies and defines the laboratory for diagnosis of diseases as Clinical laboratory.

This means that the hospital laboratories where testing of patients' sample is carried out is the clinical laboratory. The laboratory physicians (pathologists) are responsible for all tests carried out in the clinical laboratory. The Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria has the sole responsibility for the regulation of the clinical laboratory.

Materials and Method: The study was a cross-sectional descriptive survey. A sample size calculated was 216 using the Leslie Kish formula.