Doctors and Litigation: The L Word

Imagine you are a highly capable physician who saved a patient's life. You're sued over it anyway. 

Actually, your hospital system is sued for it, but they need you to defend it.

You spend days preparing for deposition, then eventually many weeks preparing for trial -- not to mention the five years of stress you endured leading up to it. You miss work for days of meetings with attorneys, and then for several weeks at trial, where you are maligned, misrepresented, and personally attacked.

Nevertheless, you testify like a consummate professional, bring the whole thing across the finish line, secure a victory for your hospital in court..and start learning to live with the scars.

And then? You return to work. You have to work a lot extra, because now you have to make up all the shifts you missed during prep and trial.

But nobody at work seems to know anything even happened. No one from Risk or leadership acknowledges your actions, or says 'thank you for saving the hospital $30 million'. No one mentions anything about what was the most difficult experience in your professional life. And when you meet with your boss for your scheduled annual review after your return, he asks you how your "vacation" was.

This was the experience of one of my clients, and it is a shockingly common one. In fact, it's the norm. And, unsurprisingly, it creates a lot of resentment. 

This is not good leadership. 

This episode is about how to be a better leader for your physicians, nurses, and other clinicians in litigation. It's a conversation about why it matters, and why it's both the right thing to do and advantageous to your organization's bottom line.

Have a listen to learn about host Dr. Gita Pensa's 10-point framework, one she workshops with hospitals and medical organizations across the country. 

Mentioned resource:

Becker's Hospital Review: Uncontrollable Stress in Healthcare Workers May Be a Legal Hazard Researchers Argue

Duty to Reduce Uncontrollable Stress in Healthcare Workers. Help Is on the Way
Health; Privatera et al., 2026.
 
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Take the LEAP! Be litigation-ready.

Doctors and Patient-Facing Clinicians: Learn from Dr. Pensa's Litigation Education and Performance for Clinicians course. Up to 16 hours of AMA Category 1 CME/CNE credits available in this self-paced, attorney-approved video course that will teach you about the skills and mindset required to face medical litigation with integrity and know how. Learn many of the performance coaching techniques Dr. Pensa uses with her own 1:1 coaching clients. 

START HERE: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/LEAP/signup

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Attorneys, Risk, Claims, and Medical Leadership: Learn about "Defense LEAP" and partnering with Dr. Pensa to ensure your medical defendants are supported and prepared from the very beginning. I help with the fear, the confusion, and the basic education -- so your time with them is spent on elevated strategy instead of groundwork.

Contact Dr. Pensa through her website to learn more: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/contact

Physician assistants (PAs), nurse practitioners (NPs), certified registered nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), certified nurse midwives (CNMs), and other non-physician clinicians increasingly face malpractice litigation -- sometimes along with a physician...and sometimes not. 

For the purposes of education, we'll put them all under the umbrella of Advanced Practice Provider, or APP, although their roles vary greatly, and we acknowledge this.

And, although it barely seems possible, APPs usually have had even less education about litigation than physicians. 

This episode starts with the story of a PA who won at trial, describing the experience in her own words.

We then discuss some critical issues for APPs in litigation, and the doctors who work with them, with defense attorney Anthony Abeln, of Hamel Marcin Dunn Reardon and Shea PC. Mr. Abeln is a member of the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.  His practice areas include professional liability defense, hospital and medical law, product liability, and others. He holds degrees in law, educational policy, and history and policy, and is a member of the bar of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts.  He also teaches legal writing and appellate advocacy at New England Law/Boston.

_______________________________________

Take the LEAP! Be litigation-ready.

Learn from Dr. Pensa's Litigation Education and Performance for Clinicians course. Up to 16 hours of AMA Category 1 CME/CNE credits available in this self-paced, attorney-approved video course that will teach you about the skills and mindset required to face medical litigation with integrity and know how. Learn many of the performance coaching techniques Dr. Pensa uses with her own 1:1 coaching clients. 

START HERE: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/LEAP/signup

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Attorneys, Risk, Claims, and Medical Leadership: Learn about "Defense LEAP" and partnering with Dr. Pensa to ensure your medical defendants are supported and prepared from the very beginning. I help with the fear, the confusion, and the basic education -- so your time with them is spent on elevated strategy instead of groundwork.

Contact Dr. Pensa through her website to learn more: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/contact

Litigation in the U.S. is an enormous business sector. Tort costs exceeded $529 billion in 2022, rising at 7.1% annually between 2016 and 2022, outpacing both inflation and GDP growth. Medical malpractice litigation is part of this machine. The burden gets passed back to American households through higher premiums, defensive medicine, and reduced resources for care. 

Your opponent in litigation is not the plaintiff. It's the plaintiff's attorney, who is part of this industry -- and you are what stands between them and, potentially, millions of dollars.

So doesn't it make sense that they will try any tactic available to them to win--even if they know, deep down, that your care was reasonable? 

Trial consultant and communications expert Heather Hansen returns to the podcast to talk about knowing your opponent: what plaintiff's attorneys are doing, why they're doing it, and how unprepared physicians can get stuck in sticky traps, even when their medicine was good. Plaintiff's attorneys publicly teach their newest tactics to one another as a matter of furthering their business interests -- and now you can understand what they're doing as well.

Guest: Heather Hansen is a deposition and trial consultant, and a renowned expert on persuasion, influence, and credibility. For over 20 years, she defended providers and hospitals in medical malpractice cases. She has helped leaders from Harvard Business School, Google, LinkedIn, LVMH, the American Medical Association, and Hospital Corporations of America advocate for change, resources, opportunities, and attention. Heather has been featured on The Today Show, Dr Oz, CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CBS, and Fox Business. She’s the best-selling author of The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself.

Mentioned Resources:

Heather Hansen created The Prepared Expert course to help ethical expert witnesses communicate with confidence, credibility, and composure under pressure.

Malpractice Liability and Health Care Quality: A Review — JAMA, 2020

US Chamber of Commerce Tort Costs in America

Heather Hansen's previous appearance: The Blame Game: Finger Pointing in Charting and Litigation

Compassionomics 

Trial Guides 

Reptile: The 2009 Manual of the Plantiff's Revolution by David Ball and Don Keenan is out of print, but you can find old copies on eBay or Amazon. 

_______________________________________

Take the LEAP! Be litigation-ready.

Learn from Dr. Pensa's attorney-vetted Litigation Education and Performance for Clinicians course. Up to 16 hours of AMA Category 1 CME/CNE credits available in this self-paced video course that will teach you about the skills and mindset required to face medical litigation with integrity and know how. Learn many of the performance coaching techniques Dr. Pensa uses with her own 1:1 coaching clients. 

START HERE: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/LEAP/signup

_______________________

Attorneys, Risk, Claims, and Medical Leadership: Learn about "Defense LEAP" and partnering with Dr. Pensa to ensure your medical defendants are supported and prepared from the very beginning. I help with the fear, the confusion, and the basic education -- so your time with them is spent on elevated strategy instead of groundwork.

Contact Dr. Pensa through her website to learn more: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/contact

Perfectionism is one of the most underappreciated drivers of suffering in malpractice litigation, and one of the least talked about. In this episode, Dr. Gita Pensa is joined by Dr. Amna Shabbir, dual board-certified physician, Master Certified Life Coach, and TEDx speaker, to explore how the perfectionism that made us good doctors becomes our own worst enemy when we are sued.

We explore the shame-perfectionism cycle that medicine instills in us, how it shapes our response to being named in a lawsuit, and what it looks like to move from self-punishment toward excellence grounded in courage and clarity. We emphasize that civil litigation is a dispute resolution mechanism, not a verdict on your care or your character, and explore why that distinction is so hard to hold onto. 

Dr. Shabbir is the creator of the Courage Bridge, a framework for high achievers ready to redefine success without sacrificing standards.

In this episode:

Why perfectionism and shame are baked into medical training

How litigation exploits that conditioning

The difference between pursuing excellence and chasing perfection

The self-punishment and self-criticism that often accompanies perfectionism

Why even physicians who know they did nothing wrong still may suffer

What it means to separate your identity from the accusation

The most pervasive types of perfectionism and how they apply in medicine

Resources mentioned or recommended:

Dr. Amna Shabbir's TEDx Talk: "Perfectionism Has a Solution: It's Not What You Think"

The Courage Bridge: dramnashabbir.com

LEAP for Clinicians course

Self-Compassion and the work of Dr. Kristin Neff 

Dr. Will Bynum and his work on Shame in Medicine

The Nocturnists' Shame in Medicine series

Roon: The Digital Home for Medicine. Ask-Me-Anything with Dr. Pensa on June 4, 2026

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Take the LEAP! Be litigation-ready.

Learn from Dr. Pensa's attorney-vetted Litigation Education and Performance for Clinicians course. Up to 16 hours of AMA Category 1 CME/CNE credits available in this self-paced video course that will teach you about the skills and mindset required to face medical litigation with integrity and know-how. Learn many of the techniques Dr. Pensa uses with her own 1:1 coaching clients. 

START HERE: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/LEAP/signup

_______________________

Attorneys, Risk, Claims, and Medical Leadership: Learn about "Defense LEAP" and partnering with Dr. Pensa to ensure your medical defendants are supported and prepared from the very beginning. Contact Dr. Pensa through her website to learn more: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/contact

In this episode, we take a hard look at the growing use, and misuse, of punitive damages allegations in medical malpractice cases -- and how this trend has reshaped the practice of medicine in places like New Mexico.

What was once intended as a rare legal tool to punish truly egregious conduct is increasingly being deployed early and broadly, sometimes before the facts of a case are fully known.

It significantly raises the emotional and financial stakes, often destabilizing defendants and influencing decision-making in ways that have little to do with the quality of the care provided, and more to do with avoiding the risk of catastrophic personal loss.

The result is not only profound individual distress, but a ripple effect across the healthcare system.

We explore how this type of environment predictably drives physicians out of higher-risk regions, contributing to growing care deserts, and ultimately affecting patient access and outcomes. What happens to a healthcare system when the legal climate becomes too predatory, too dangerous, for good doctors to practice there?

Defense attorney Jessica Marshall , partner in the Albuquerque office of Mayer, LLP, is here today to help us make sense of these implications. We discuss the dramatic loss of access to doctors in New Mexico as a direct result of its predatory malpractice climate, and, in particular, the weaponization of punitive damages as a routine pressure tactic. We also highlight the positive results of recent staunch advocacy from doctors, lawyers, and patients alike, hoping to restore access to care in New Mexico.

We end with a call to action: what is happening in your state?

In nearly every state, plaintiff's attorneys exert heavy lobbying dollars, and even become state legislators in order to introduce legislation that enriches them. Even in states with current common sense protections, there are efforts to walk back limitations of the use of punitive damages and existing caps on damages. But, as you'll see in this conversation, when that happens, there can be devastating real-world consequences for patients and their doctors alike. It's not theoretical. 

Have a listen and share this with your colleagues. 

_______________________

Take the LEAP! Be litigation-ready.

Learn from Dr. Pensa's attorney-vetted Litigation Education and Performance for Clinicians course. Up to 16 hours of AMA Category 1 CME/CNE credits available in this self-paced video course that will teach you about the skills and mindset required to face medical litigation with integrity and know-how. Learn many of the techniques Dr. Pensa uses with her own 1:1 coaching clients. 

START HERE: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/LEAP/signup

_______________________

Attorneys, Risk, Claims, and Medical Leadership: Learn about "Defense LEAP" and partnering with Dr. Pensa to ensure your medical defendants are supported and prepared from the very beginning. Contact Dr. Pensa through her website to learn more: https://www.doctorsandlitigation.com/contact