Who is legally responsible for ensuring accurate diagnosis in a hospital?

• A. Attending physician
• B. The attending physician and consulting physicians
• C. Consulting physicians
• D. Nurse

Answer: (B)

Diagnosing in a hospital is a collaborative process that carries legal responsibility for the clinicians involved. The attending physician has the primary duty to oversee the patient's overall care, coordinate the diagnostic workup, interpret results in the context of the patient, and make the final clinical judgment. Consulting physicians bring specialized expertise and contribute essential input to the diagnostic process; when they participate, they share responsibility for the accuracy of the diagnostic conclusions they provide. Nurses play a critical role in monitoring and supporting care, but they do not establish medical diagnoses, so the legal responsibility for diagnosis falls mainly on the physicians involved in the decision-making. In practice, this means both the attending and the consulting physicians can be held liable if a misdiagnosis results from failures in evaluation, interpretation, or consideration of appropriate differential diagnoses.