Medical Malpractice Cases: Understanding WhyThey Occur

Both doctors and patients dread the term medical malpractice. If that term comes up, it probably means the doctor or other medical professional did something incorrect. The patient won’t like hearing it either, since it likely means they sustained an injury or contracted an illness due to a mistake someone in the medical field made.

There’s medical malpractice, and then there’s what the industry calls medical negligence. They’re similar from a legal standpoint, but not identical. It’s a distinction that won’t matter much to a patient if a medical professional harms them, though.

Both medical malpractice and medical negligence cause lawsuits. These cases often work their way through the court system. Sometimes, the medical professional or entity the patient sued will settle out of court.

They will usually do so because they want to end this matter as quickly as possible. If the lawsuit goes to a jury’s verdict, that probably means that the medical professional or entity that the patient sued doesn’t feel the case has any validity.

Going to a jury’s verdict carries a risk element, though. If the medical professional or entity that the patient sued goes that route, and the jury’s verdict goes against them, they might have to pay much more than they would via settlement.

In any case, it’s important that patients understand how and why medical malpractice lawsuits occur. We’ll discuss a few ways they can happen in the following article.

Operating on the Wrong Body Part

Several situations that occur in hospitals, clinics, or a doctor’s office might cause a medical malpractice case. You can also call such an action a personal injury lawsuit.

Many lawyers get into this field, and they do so because they usually have plentiful work. While some represent car crash victims or they make some other area their specialty, others work primarily or completely in the medical malpractice niche.

These attorneys could probably tell you about certain patterns they notice in these cases regarding what causes them. For instance, they might represent a patient after a surgeon operated on the wrong body part.

It sounds unlikely, but this can happen. For instance, maybe you have a patient with a damaged UCL in their elbow. They decide to have a surgeon repair it.

Before the surgery, the surgical team should ask the patient repeatedly what operation they’re getting, and on which body part. It’s part of how the doctor and surgical staff can feel certain they’re going to get it right. They should also mark the elbow that’s getting the surgery and have it clearly listed in the patient’s chart.

Sometimes, though, all of these safeguards fail. For whatever reason, the doctor and surgical team don’t follow procedures, and they cut open the wrong elbow after giving the patient anesthesia. If that happens, the doctor may not realize till they see the intact elbow that they got it wrong.

Operating on the Wrong Person

You may also have a situation where the doctor operates on the wrong patient. Similarly, they should have this patient’s medical chart on hand. They should look at it and know what surgery this patient needs.

Once again, though, they might get it wrong. If these sorts of things happen, it typically represents a major failing by the surgeon, the rest of the medical staff, or the facility itself.

With so many safeguards in place, you would think that medical malpractice wouldn’t happen very often. However, if you look at the numbers ever year, it might surprise you how frequently such a mishap takes place.

If the surgeon operates on the wrong person or body part, it could happen because they didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Maybe they’re at the end of a long shift, and they’re not properly caffeinated.

Perhaps the medical staff accidentally switched the charts of two patients. Maybe the staff put the wrong patient in the operating room because they’re extraordinarily busy that day.

One of these simple mistakes can sometimes cause a medical malpractice incident. If anything like this happens, then you can feel sure the patient will have fertile grounds for a lawsuit and a payout via either a settlement or a jury’s verdict.

An Unnecessary Surgery

You might also have a situation where there’s no misplaced chart or patient in the wrong room. Instead, maybe the doctor felt that a patient needed a surgery, but afterward, it turns out that they didn’t even require it.

If this happens, then maybe the surgeon misdiagnosed the patient’s condition. You would think that wouldn’t happen very often, but doctors don’t have infallible status. They may seem very knowledgeable, but they can make mistakes, just like anyone else.

If they see symptoms that seem to mimic a condition, and they decide this patient needs a surgery because of that, then they might move forward with the operation before they realize their error. The patient goes along with it because they have no medical expertise.

You may also have a medical malpractice case where the doctor started prescribing the patient a medication that they didn’t need for a condition they didn’t have. That can make them very ill. It makes sense that they would file a lawsuit then as well.

In such instances, you’re not alleging as a patient that the doctor or some other member of the medical team made a careless error. You’re instead alleging that the doctor didn’t give you the standard of care that the medical field would reasonably expect in your situation.

Proving that you did not get the traditional or regular standard of care at trial then becomes necessary. Your lawyer might put expert witnesses on the stand who can agree that you did not get the standard of care that the medical profession would normally afford you.

No matter why the doctor, their staff, or the facility harmed you, if you can prove that they did, then you should have some monetary damages coming your way.

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