The dissertation is devoted to the formulation of scientifically substantiated proposals on the basis of complex and systematic criminal-legal characteristics of the criminal offense under Art. 139 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine which aimed at improving the certain criminal-legal provisions (Article 139 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), as well as at improving the effectiveness of criminal law in the field of proper medical assistance to the person in need in accordance with applicable law, and in particular by the realization of the right to health care and medical assistance.
The research is performed within the current anthropocentric direction for modern science, in particular when the focus of the state should be on the person as on a social being, whose behavior is regulated by certain attitudes and/or values that can be governed by traditions, customs, law etc.
As a result of scientific analysis of the theoretical state of this problem, in particular, its legislative regulation, as well as the practice of applying of current legislation, important and significant proposals for the science of criminal law was provided, new provisions and conclusions were formulated. In particular, the author studied 335 theoretical sources by the conduction of the full review of the legislative material, which contains references to the provisions of the criminal offense under Art. 139 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, analyzed all 9 court sentences from the Unified State Register of Court Decisions issued from 2012 to 2020 in terms of criminal liability for failure to render assistance to a sick person by a medical professional and interviewed 930 respondents on this issue.
During the research, the origins and genesis of criminal liability for the criminal offense of failure to render assistance to a sick person by a medical professional and the current state of the problem were defined (section 1.1).
In the dissertation the methodological foundations for the formation of the author's approach to defining the concept of a criminal offense "Failure to render assistance to a sick person by a medical professional" under Art. 139 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine were established (subsection 1.2). Taking into account the above and the general concept of a criminal offense (Article 11 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), as well as objective and subjective features of this act, the author formulated a definition of this criminal offense on which should be understood: "Intentional (in the form of direct intent for P.1), and under Part 2 of this article, a double form of guilt (intentional guilt in the form of direct intent to the action and carelessness in the form of criminally illegal self-confidence to the consequences), prohibited by the Criminal Code action or inaction, the subject (medical professional), encroaching on public relations that arising from the conditions for the rendering of medical assistance, in accordance with applicable law, to the person in need by realization of his/her right to health care and medical assistance by a doctor or other medical professional in state/municipal/private health care institutions, or by a research-teaching staff of higher or postgraduate educational institutions that provide training staff in the field of health care, in the case that he/she has a certificate of a doctor-specialist and a permission of the head of the health care institution to render medical assistance, or by an individual entrepreneur who is registered and licensed to conduct business activities related to medical practice, which consists in failure to render (inaction) or refusal (action) to render medical assistance to a victim who is in a physiological and/or pathological process that is critical or/and dangerous to his/her life and health, in the case that the latter needs medical assistance and there are no obstacles, as well as the is an opportunity to take action to eliminate the danger to victim’s health and life and a patient will be provided with medical assistance by a medical professional who in accordance with established rules and current legislation is obliged to provide it, and it caused (under Part 2 of this article) death or other grave consequences for the victim".
The main factors of social-legal conditionality of the criminal law prohibition under Art. 139 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine were examined, such as: a) social-criminological factor; b) regulatory factor; c) ethical factor; d) international-legal factor; e) cultural-historical factor (subsection 1.2).
According to the analysis of the factors of social-legal conditionality of this prohibition (Article 139 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), it should be noted that there is a dissimilarity of views on general and special provisions of social-legal conditionality of this prohibition, as well as there are contradictory judgments of scientists concerning classification systems.
