With years of training and professional experience, most physicians can diagnose a patient’s symptoms and provide them with recommendations for the right kind of treatment. Unfortunately, because doctors are human, they can make mistakes at work just like anyone else.
They can experience burnout on the job, or they might even engage in professional practices that don’t meet the industry standard for care. When a patient suffers provable damage because of a doctor’s negligence, inadequate care or mistakes, they may need to look into a medical malpractice claim against the physician involved.
Being able to recognize the most common forms of medical malpractice can help you determine if you have fallen victim to it.
Misdiagnosis or failed diagnosis
The most basic responsibility of doctors is to figure out what is wrong with you so that you can treat the issue. Unfortunately, thousands of people every year experience negative medical outcomes because their doctors failed to diagnose them in a timely manner or diagnosed them with the wrong thing. Not receiving treatment for a progressive illness could be a serious issue, as could receiving treatment for a medical condition you don’t actually have.
Birth injuries
Labor and delivery are dangerous for a mother and her unborn child. Unfortunately, sometimes doctors contribute to a patient’s risk rather than reducing it. They might perform unnecessary medical interventions that injure the baby or mom. They could fail to monitor the child and not intervene in time when something goes wrong. When an expectant mother or child suffers severe injuries in the birth process, the family could have lifelong expenses as a result.
Medication mistakes
A shocking number of people receive the wrong medicine in the hospital or the wrong drug from the pharmacist. Medication errors might include giving someone the wrong drugs, prescribing a new drug that has a dangerous interaction with another medication the patient takes or prescribing someone the wrong dose for their age, weight or medical condition.
Surgical errors
Other than birth injuries, surgical mistakes might be the most dramatic kind of medical malpractice. Mistakes can range from anesthesia problems, which could prove fatal, to leaving items behind in a patient. A doctor could also perform the wrong operation on someone or operate on the wrong part of the body.
Recognizing the different kinds of medical malpractice can help you fight back if a doctor’s mistakes or incompetence have affected your life.
