Background: “Medico legal” is the term that incorporates the basics of two professions i.e. medicine and law. “Medical Jurisprudence” is the application of knowledge of law in practice of medicine in other words; it deals with legal aspects of medicine such as legal rights, privileges, duties, and obligations of a medical practitioner”. The term medico legal has gained a lot of importance in the past years after the passage of the Consumer Protection Act in 1986. Although forensic medicine and medical jurisprudence is the part of curriculum during the second year of medical school in India, still many interns and residents lack the knowledge about medico legal issues. Aims: The aim of the present study was to assess the knowledge regarding medico legal problems amongst interns and residents at a rural tertiary care teaching hospital in western Maharashtra. Material & Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted at Rural Medical College and Pravara Rural Hospital, Loni Dist. Ahmednagar (Maharashtra) consists of total 160 doctors who included 80 interns and the same number of residents over a period of six months from July 2009 to December 2009. A predesigned and pretested questionnaire was used for the data collection. Results: In the present study, MLC (medico legal case) is a common abbreviation used by the residents and interns while working in the casualty and the wards, most of them (90%) knew what it stood for. More than 50% (n=52) residents were unaware of the cases to be informed to the police while among interns only 19% (n=15) were correct. 68 (78.75%) interns and 73 (91.25%) residents knew that post-mortem didn’t mean that it had to be a police case. Conclusion: Overall knowledge of medico legal issues among our residents and interns had not shown upto the mark. There is a need to train these young doctors about various medico legal aspects, their role and responsibilities. The prevalence of certain misconceptions and void in the knowledge about medico legal issues can be done away be giving repeated trainings to them.

Key words: Medico legal, Knowledge, Interns, Residents