ABSTRACT : Lately dispute between doctor and patient often happens, and some of them involve the hospital, as the health facilities where the doctor devote themselves also sued. Actually, the people’s view on medical profession is a sign that some of them are not satisfied with medical service and medical profession’s devotion in society. Generally, patient and their families are dissatisfied with the medical service because their expectations cannot be met by the doctor. In other words, there is a gap between expectations and the reality obtained by the patient.
If the change in the characteristic of doctors as the service provider and the change of people as the medical service consumer are not supported by communication improvement between doctor and patient, it can cause dissatisfication and conflict between them.
This research uses combination between doctrinal approach and non-doctrinal approach. This research is done in Semarang, Indonesia.
The result shows that most of the conflicts between doctor and patient are caused by differences in perception and communication problem in medical service effort, considering the agreement between doctor and patient is inspanningsverbintenis. Most people do not understand that there are a lot of other factors outside the doctor’s control which can alter the result of medical effort, such as stage of the disease, physical condition, immunity of the body, quality of the medicine and patient’s obedience towards the doctor’s advice, therefore the result of a medical effort is full of uncertainty and cannot be calculated. Conflicts between doctor and patient cannot always be referred as malpractice, but most of them happens because of misconception in communication between doctor and patient.

Keywords: Medical dispute, doctor, patient, hospital