6 Types of Medical Malpractices You Should Know
It’s important to recognize that health professionals are humans, so they can make errors. Typically, a medical malpractice occurs when a person sustains health-threatening injuries due to substandard care.
Many people tend to confuse medical malpractice with common mistakes or patient dissatisfaction. Here’s an explanation of what medical malpractice is not.
1. Medical Malpractice Is Not Just a Typical Mistake
Mistakes may occur in the treatment provided by a doctor.. They are humans; there is always a chance for error. However, it only becomes malpractice if it results from negligence or failure to provide standard care.
2. Medical Practice Is Not Patients’ Dissatisfaction
It is important to note that medical malpractice is not the same as having an unsatisfactory feeling about the care you receive. As long as the care medical professionals have given you meets the standard of care, the law does not recognize your dissatisfaction as grounds for medical malpractice.
3. Unexpected Outcome
An unexpected outcome from surgery does necessarily indicate a malpractice case. A lot is happening in the operation room, and unforeseen circumstances could arise. As long as the outcome of the surgery or care was not a result of substandard care, then it is not medical malpractice.
Six major types of errors can occur when medical professionals fail to provide standard care. Should one of these errors occur, you may file a lawsuit in court to receive compensation for injuries. The six types of medical malpractice include the following:
Malpractice 1: Misdiagnosis or Failure to Diagnose
Failure to diagnose is when a doctor overlooks diagnosing you of a severe ailment for an extended period. The law especially sees this as an error if the failure to diagnose was due to negligence and not because of a genuine attempt to diagnose. Misdiagnosis, on the other hand, is when a doctor incorrectly diagnoses you for a disease when you are suffering from another.
Misdiagnosis and failure to diagnose can lead to death or the patient sustaining life-changing diseases because they did not receive care when they should have.
To prove misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose, you need to show that the doctor failed to diagnose within a specific period that it would take another doctor to diagnose in similar circumstances. This would show that you did not receive a standard of care from that doctor. You may then file a lawsuit for medical malpractice.
Malpractice 2: Failure to Administer Treatment
Failure to administer treatment is when a medical doctor or health professional fails to administer standard treatment to a patient due to negligence. It can occur when the doctor misdiagnoses, fails to diagnose, or delays the patient from receiving treatment.
Other scenarios that the law recognizes as medical malpractice include failing to treat an emergency patient because of a lack of health insurance, discharging a patient when a proper evaluation would have called for admitting the patient, halting a treatment plan without tests, or failing to refer a patient to a specialist in the field.
Should the patient suffer health-threatening injuries due to this negligence, they may file a lawsuit for medical malpractice. Just like with misdiagnosis, they need to determine if the doctor failed to administer treatment in a time frame another competent person would have.
Malpractice 3: Drugs Prescription Error
Should a doctor prescribe the wrong drug to a patient, it can lead to severe health consequences for that patient. When a patient suffers health-threatening injuries due to the prescription of the wrong medication, they may file a lawsuit for medical malpractice.
Medication errors can also arise from misdiagnosis. When a doctor misdiagnoses a patient, they may prescribe drugs that fit their diagnosis, whereas the patient is suffering from another ailment. This can lead to severe consequences for the patient.
Administration of drug overdoses and incorrect dosage prescriptions both also fall under medical malpractice.
Malpractice 4: Injuries from Childbirth
During labor, a woman may suffer different injuries due to the negligence of the obstetrician. Also, the child could suffer severe life-changing medical injuries like brain damage, cerebral palsy, bone fractures, et cetera. These fall under the category of failing to provide standard care.
Childbirth injuries could also be a result of some pregnancy complications, which the doctors would have avoided if they had adequately evaluated the woman during pregnancy.
Malpractice 5: Surgery Error
A patient can suffer health-damaging injuries from errors during surgery. Imagine a person who goes to the hospital for an appendectomy but ends up having his leg amputated because of a grave error from the surgeon.
Surgical errors include leaving surgical equipment inside a patient’s body after surgery and performing a surgery when further tests would have informed them otherwise.
Malpractice 6: Anesthesia Administration Error
When an anesthesiologist administers anesthesia overdose or underdone due to negligence or using bad equipment, it can result in fatal health consequences like brain damage or death. It falls under medical malpractice.
To file a lawsuit for an anesthesia error, you must show that the anesthesiologist did not correctly find out the patient’s medical history to check for anesthesia complications or failed to underline what the patient should and should not do before surgery.
What You Should Do if You Suspect Medical Malpractice
1. Get your medical records
2. Detail everything that happened
3. Detail all the complications and how it affected your general life
Why You Should Engage a Lawyer
First, you need to know who to file the medical lawsuit against. You can sue the attending physician, nurse, hospital, surgeon, anesthesiologist, or pharmacist. However, you might have difficulty determining this. An attorney would conduct an investigation and determine the right person to sue for medical malpractice.
“Negotiating with insurance companies is difficult. You may find it tedious and receive less compensation than you should have. A medical malpractice attorney knows the right negotiation tactics to use to help your case,” says attorney Eric H. Weitz of The Weitz Firm, LLC .
Many different laws guide medical malpractice. A layperson may not know these laws. A lawyer would know the correct argument to apply to your case and find the right laws that protect you. You may also need to discuss your case with an attorney to determine whether a lawsuit is worth the time and energy.
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