As you can see, this is a rather large and diverse group of jobs. It’s also important to keep in mind that just because your chosen profession isn’t listed, doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t seriously consider E&O protection. So, if you didn’t see your job or field above, how do you know if you need coverage?

The short answer is that there is no substitute for personalized, professional advice from an organization that specializes in providing counsel and advice about E&O. There are too many nuances and contingencies in Canadian law to thoroughly cover them all here. In addition to the obvious advantages of finding someone with expert industry-specific knowledge, their experience will also be invaluable to you. In other words, this article is not a substitute for professional legal advice.

However, that doesn’t mean we can’t give you a general idea of what factors should be considered. If you take a look at the bullet list of jobs, some of them might seem completely opposite. After all, what do doctors and salon owners have in common? Dentists and real estate agents?

While they may appear dissimilar, the one thing they all have in common is that they have clients who are paying for a service. Those clients, presumably, expect a certain level of quality or accuracy. Doctors aren’t paid to misdiagnose their patients, salon owners shouldn’t be ruining their customers’ hair, and dentists are supposed to protect their patients’ health with minimal or no pain during the process. These all seem like reasonable enough expectations, but let’s have a look at this from a different perspective.

Suppose you are a doctor working in Toronto, and you see an average of 50 patients per day. While this number is on the high end for most locations, it’s certainly not unheard of, and plenty of doctors see more than this. Now, suppose you work 340 days per year. That comes out to a grand total of 17,000 patient visits per year. Of course, that doesn’t mean you’ll be seeing 17,000 different patients. Many visits – probably the majority, in fact – will be repeat visits. Nevertheless, it’s still 17,000 opportunities for you to make a mistake.

Now, let’s assume you are an amazing doctor. In fact, you give the correct advice/diagnosis/prescription 99.9% of the time. Put another way, you do the right thing at your job 999 out of 1,000 times. The problem is, you’re getting a lot more than 1,000 patient visits. Even with your stellar accuracy rate, your probability of making a mistake at some point during the year is virtually guaranteed.

Don’t believe me? The math to prove it is fairly simple: 100 – (0.999^17,000) = 99.99999996%.

To be clear, that’s a 99.99999996% chance that you will make an error in your medical practice at some point during the year. It might seem hard to believe, but that’s what happens when you start dealing with large numbers. Even the best practitioner in a given field isn’t perfect – we’re all human, after all.

In all fairness, the numbers used above aren’t intended to represent the likelihood that a doctor ends up facing a malpractice lawsuit during a given year. First of all, if you consider all the mistakes a doctor could make, some of them won’t be serious enough to gain any major traction as a lawsuit. Second, even if you filter just the serious mistakes, not all patients who potentially have a lawsuit are going to pursue one. Finally, even among the credible lawsuits that are pursued by patients, not all of them will ultimately find the doctor guilty of malpractice.

However, it’s a useful thought exercise for thinking about probabilities. More specifically, it highlights the fact that even someone who is excellent in their field is going to make mistakes at some point. You may be great at what you do, but you’re not invulnerable. When considering these caveats, it’s also worth considering whether 99.9% accuracy is realistically achievable in your field.