Can I sue a hospital in Malta directly, or only the individual doctor involved?

Whether you would pursue a claim against the individual doctor, the hospital, or both, generally depends on the specific circumstances of what went wrong and the nature of the relationship between the practitioner and the hospital, since under general principles of Maltese civil liability connected to the Civil Code, Chapter 16 of the Laws of Malta, an employer, including a hospital employing medical staff, can bear vicarious liability for the negligent acts of its employees carried out within the course of their employment, meaning the hospital itself could potentially be a proper defendant even where the actual substandard care was provided by an individual doctor on its staff. In practice, particularly for care received in a public hospital setting, claims are often brought against the relevant public health entity responsible for that institution, whereas care received from an independent doctor operating in a private capacity, even if using hospital facilities, could involve a different liability structure depending on the specific contractual and employment relationships involved, meaning correctly identifying the proper defendant, or defendants, genuinely requires understanding the specific structure of how your care was actually provided. Given how much correctly identifying the appropriate party to sue depends on the specific facts of your treatment and the relevant institutional and employment relationships involved, this is a matter that needs to be properly assessed by a lawyer experienced in medical negligence claims before formally pursuing any legal action.