Medical malpractice is part of the curriculum at the University of Buffalo Medical School in New York. An adjunct research instructor of family medicine knows from personal experience the havoc that medical errors and other forms of medical malpractice in hospitals can create. Citing the fact that 180,000 Medicare patients die each year across the country due to medical error, the teacher asks students to consider the very human side of each tragedy. She should know; her mother was one.