Treating a person with health problems requires due diligence, gentle handling, and proper care. Unfortunately, people working in the healthcare industry are also prone to mistakes. While they are legally bound to provide duty or standard of care, being humans, they can also make mistakes for many reasons, such as stress or misjudgments.
Thus, if you or a loved one has suffered medical negligence or misconduct from the healthcare professional during treatment, your best bet is to hire a medical malpractice lawyer to file the claim and receive your rightful compensation. A lawyer can help speed up the claim process, communicate with insurance companies on your behalf, and deal with the complex legalities of a malpractice lawsuit.
So, what medical issues may require the assistance of a lawyer? Here’s what you need to know:
1. Inaccurate diagnosis
This type of medical malpractice occurs when the doctor fails to diagnose or misdiagnoses a medical condition. However, you must understand that misdiagnosis on its own may not necessarily be medical malpractice because even the most competent and highly experienced doctors can make diagnostic errors.
Instead, you can only file a medical claim if the misdiagnosis results in inappropriate medical care, late treatment or no treatment at all, worsening the patient’s medical condition.
Ensure you only hand over the case to an experienced lawyer from a reputed legal firm such as lawfirm.com. Also, before you file this claim, make sure you can prove there was a patient-doctor relationship and that the doctor failed to live up to the standard of care while diagnosing the condition.
2. Childbirth Issues
Generally, childbirth is considered a very low-risk medical procedure. However, you cannot avoid the chances of negligence completely. It means that anything can go wrong during labor or even postpartum care, leading to severe harm to the mother or her newborn, such as brain injury, heart failure, maternal infection, or permanent damage.
For instance, medical professionals must navigate complex birthing situations and provide immediate medical treatment. They must act quickly during emergencies when the baby or mother is in danger. However, failure to provide the required medical assistance or follow the standard of care is considered medical negligence.
Since the medical mistake can cause families lifelong financial and emotional hardship, they can file a medical malpractice claim, seeking financial compensation. Birth negligence compensation helps families afford their and their child’s treatment and help them live independent lives. Thus, it is very important to seek the assistance of a lawyer who can help you win your case and get your rightful compensation by making informed decisions while you care for yourself and your newborn.
3. Surgical errors
While you may not believe it, surgical error is among the most common medical malpractices. Some of the most common surgical errors include operating on the wrong body part, leaving surgical instruments inside patients, contamination, wrong-patient or unnecessary surgery, or when the surgeon fails to prepare for surgery, such as creating a sterile environment or disinfecting instruments. One surgical error that is often hardest to detect is when the surgeon causes damage to tissues or organs while operating on another organ.
While there can be many ways a surgical error can occur, patients who typically suffer from such errors face physical or psychological damage or even die at the hands of surgeons. Since these are preventable medical malpractices and may take months or even years before detection, the only way to seek financial compensation and win the case is by filing a timely malpractice claim, outlining all the details, through a competent lawyer.
The compensation for surgical errors also depends on the extent of your damages or injuries, so make sure you have a lawyer who is not only specialized in dealing with surgical error cases but can gather evidence or documents such as a medical report, witness statements, financial reports, etc. and enlist the help of medical experts if required.
4. Absence of informed consent
Another medical issue that may require you to lawyer up and file a claim is failure to obtain informed consent. Besides certain exceptions, such as treating an incapacitated patient in an emergency, medical professionals must seek informed consent from their patients before performing a procedure or treatment.
However, if a patient hasn’t consented, they can file a medical malpractice claim, especially if they suffered injury after the treatment. Nonetheless, in order to establish a valid claim for failure to obtain informed consent, the courts often need patients to prove certain things. For instance, the patient must prove that the doctor did not reveal the nature of the procedure or treatment or its material risks. The patient must also prove they would have rejected the treatment in question had they been informed properly, including both objective and subjective elements.
Patients may also be asked to prove that any reasonable person would have denied proceeding if the material risks were informed. Thus, to win your case and get rightful compensation, patients prefer seeking the assistance of experienced lawyers who can thoroughly evaluate and help determine the grounds for filing such a claim, let alone gathering sufficient evidence such as doctor’s visit recordings or notes or even statements from eyewitnesses.
Conclusion
Even though healthcare professionals are legally bound to provide the highest quality patient care, medical malpractices are inevitable. However, one way to receive your legal damages and protect yourself financially is to seek the assistance of a specialized lawyer. Before hiring your lawyer, ensure they have the expertise to handle the case.
