What Should You Know About Medical Malpractice?
Medical malpractices are instances when a medical practitioner, a healthcare provider, or a hospital causes injury to a patient due to neglect of duty or omission to perform a duty. These may include mistakes in prognosis, treatment, nursing, aftercare and other healthcare responsibilities.
A claim has to meet the following parameters in order to fall within the scope of medical malpractice.
Failure to Meet Appropriate Standards of Medical Care
There are some criteria of medical practices, which are considered as the baseline for acceptable limits. The law recognizes these practices as the standards of medical care. An important aspect in these standards is to insure that medical providers’ care is consistent with healthcare standards.
These parameters constitute the standards of medical care, which a patient is entitled to receive as per the law. Although minor variations are permitted, they can’t be entirely neglected. Any act or omission on part of medical professionals overlooking these standards of care is termed as a medical malpractice.
A Neglect Resulting in an Injury
Simply proving that proper standards of care was not provided by the healthcare professional is not sufficient. In order to make sure that your claim for medical malpractices is sustainable, you’ve to prove that you’ve incurred an Injury because of the negligence of the healthcare provider. It needs to be proven in the court that the injury wouldn’t have happened if adequate care had been taken.
An undesirable result doesn’t constitute a medical malpractice on its own. The negligence has to directly give result to the injury. What this means is that an injury without the involvement of negligence or negligence that didn’t cause any injury won’t get you a favorable decision.
Losses Caused by the Injury
A medical malpractice case is generally quite costly for the litigant because of the number of hearings and expert medical opinions as well as testimonies. In order to have a fruitful litigation, you must be able to demonstrate that you’ve incurred heavy losses due to the injuries sustained because of medical negligence.
If the losses that you can prove are lesser than the likely expenditure on the case, there’s no point in fighting it. A loss of income, disability, hardship, suffering, extreme pain or subsequent medical expenses can be taken as the losses incurred due to an injury.
Common Types of Medical Malpractices
The following are a few common types of medical malpractices:
- Incorrect or inaccurate diagnosis.
- Overlooking or misreading lab reports.
- Mistakes during surgery.
- Unnecessary or delayed operations.
- Improper post care.
- Incorrect dosages.
- Untimely discharges.
- Not admitting the correct patient.
- Not requesting the correct tests.
- Ignoring or not identifying correct symptoms.
If you or some you know has received any form of medical malpractice, you should seek professional help from an experienced board certified attorney in medical malpractice such as the Sam Adam Jr. Law Group. Board certified attorneys meet demanding standards in regard to Experience, Ethics, Education, Examination and Excellence.
Contact the Sam Adam Jr. Law Group today for a free consultation.