You are under medical professional care; they have gravely misread the circumstances and you have suffered a major harm or loss as a result. Does this present a textbook case of medical negligence? Are your injuries likely to be compensated for?
Should you ever find yourself in this state of affairs, you would naturally hope that the responses to these questions are “yes.” Sadly, the more likely responses are “maybe,” “not exactly,” and “well, it depends.”
In this blog post we discuss why under the law a medical practitioner’s claimed negligent acts are not always automatically regarded as medical malpractice. Although carelessness can lead to negative medical outcomes, it is not always the case. Medical malpractice, then, can only be claimed with the help of a lawyer from Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein, to exist when an error is demonstrated to have violated the standard of care and resulted in your injuries.
What Is The Standard of Care?
The amount of treatment a reasonably competent health care practitioner would be required to deliver any other patient confronting similar circumstances is the standard of care in the medical field. That sounds rather generic and general, yet it is exactly as such. When the judicial system is asked to determine whether the standard of care has been violated in a certain case, many elements are involved.
When deciding on the suitable level of care, one should take into account the type of medical treatment being given; the practitioner’s specialization, training and experience; and, even the location of the therapy.
Medical Errors: Was It a Bad Outcome or Malpractice?
Your health care practitioner has limited capacity to handle some diseases and disorders. Diseases are complex, thus most of them cannot have a sure cure. To confuse matters even more, most symptoms are not exclusive of any one ailment.
Therefore, a multitude of symptoms could point to several dozen distinct disorders.
Without some trial and error, your doctor may not always be able to identify the precise origin of your problems. Likewise, no therapeutic approach will affect every person in the same way.
Should this trial and error period harm the patient, what then happens? A terrible medical outcome results from your doctor carefully following accepted protocol and assiduously trying to give you the finest possible treatment. Conversely, malpractice results from your doctor not following the acknowledged standard of care in your case.
Defining Medical Malpractice and Negligence
Medical malpractice is the product of medical negligence. Negligence is the state whereby your doctor’s treatment fell short of the accepted medical norm. Following are a few particular instances of actions deemed medical negligence:
- Errors in medicine
- Surgical mistakes
- Anesthesia mistakes
- Birth injuries
- Postponed diagnosis
Suppose the error made by your doctor was less clear-cut. In your particular situation, how would judges or juries decide what the proper benchmark would have been? Usually, professional medical witnesses are brought upon the stand. They are asked specifically what they would have done if they were the ones looking after the patient.
How Do I Know The Difference?
Reading that an error in judgment is not, in itself, a clear case of medical malpractice in which you may be eligible for compensation and damages may demoralize or defeat you or a loved one who has suffered major injury at the hands of a medical practitioner. Unless you are a medical professional yourself, how can you know if what happened to you was an unfortunate but finally reasonable error or an example of neglect violating the norms of care?
To put it simply, you cannot. To help you look into and ascertain whether you might have a case and claim for damages, however, you can get in touch with a personal injury attorney focused in medical malpractice.
Conclusion
Medical malpractice left you or a loved one injured? Then, right away for direction on how to move forward, you should see an experienced medical malpractice attorney.
References:
- https://www.rudnicklaw.com/blog/doctor-mistakes-honest-error-medical-malpractice/
- https://hshlawyers.com/blog/key-difference-between-error-of-judgment-and-negligence-in-medical-malpractice-law/
