Imagine being ill and then having something or someone makes your situation a lot worse. They do this either by misdiagnosing your illness, causing you to receive the wrong treatment in the first place. Or, through some other error on their part, cause a worsening of your health.
Believe it or not, this happens to 225,000 people every year. That is just shy of a quarter of a million. If you have experienced an error like this, there may be a chance that you were a victim of medical malpractice.
What is medical malpractice?
Medical malpractice is when a medical professional causes injury to a patient through an act of omission or negligence.
It is important that this distinction is made. When people are seriously ill, a worsening of their condition and or death can, unfortunately, be a natural outcome of their ailment.
For there to be medical malpractice, a medical professional or health facility had to have caused the poor outcome through an error or omission on their part or negligent behaviour. For there to be negligent behaviour, a medical professional responsible for care must have deviated from what is considered standard care for the industry.
Surprisingly, of the nearly quarter-million people, this happens to annually, only 2% go on to seek redress for it. If you think you’ve been a victim, you need to speak to people who know medical malpractice laws to help you determine if this is the case. Your suspicions that this may be the case may not convince a judge or a jury. Certain medical errors can, on identification and investigation, be termed medical malpractice. Let us explore some of the more common ones.
Misdiagnosis of disease
Misdiagnosis of disease is frighteningly common. Annually, there are 12 million cases, of which 6 million are termed ‘serious’. Additionally, 40,000 to 80,000 people die from medical misdiagnosis every year.
For there to be a misdiagnosis of your condition, a medical professional has to incorrectly Identify what your condition is, or there has to be a delay in identifying your condition. But misdiagnosis isn’t always medical malpractice; you can look for more about this through birth injury lawyers in Baltimore. The exact criteria might change from area to area, but there are a few basic requirements for there to be malpractice present.
- There must have been negligence in the identification of your condition.
- It must have resulted in harm.
The reason for these criteria is that ordinarily, in the pursuit of their duties, doctors may accidentally misdiagnose an illness. This does not have to be negligence and may happen because of the technology or procedure used.
The patient has to prove that the doctor was negligent, and the misdiagnosis caused them harm. In order to do this, they have to show that another doctor in similar circumstances would not have made the mistake. Understandably, this is usually hard to prove and may require expert testimony.
A wrong surgical procedure performed
This is another startling medical error that gets made. There are different categories of this error. There can be:
- Wrong part errors. This is where surgery is performed on the right individual, but on the wrong part of the body.
- Wrong procedure errors. Where the correct patient has the wrong operation performed on them.
- Wrong patient errors. Where a mix-up in names, for example, may cause a patient to receive someone else’s surgical procedure.
Because this is usually the fault of someone in an administrative department and because it couldn’t have happened if there was due attention to duty, these types of errors are almost always deemed medical malpractice. There is a special category name for them. They are called “Never” events because they should have never happened.
Despite this, never events are disturbingly common at medical facilities. Reports are that a never event can be expected to happen at least 80 times a week across the US.
Prescription drug mistakes
Even if you receive the right diagnosis and have the right surgery, mistakes can be made with your aftercare. One of these is that you are prescribed the wrong medication. This can happen in different ways.
- You can be given the incorrect dosage.
- You can be given the wrong prescription for the illness you’ve been diagnosed with.
- You can be give prescribed medication that interacts badly with other medications you are taking or that you are allergic to.
- You are given medication and your doctor does not perceive you have an increased risk of addiction or abuse.
Like misdiagnosis cases, this one is hard to prove. The patient has to show that the error was the doctor’s, that the mistake was the result of negligence, and it resulted in harm.
Would a doctor of similar training prescribe the same medication? If they wouldn’t, that could be established as negligence. Like misdiagnosis, expert medical witness testimony might be needed for proving harm caused by the incorrectly prescribed medication.
Childbirth injuries
Malpractice involving children is particularly heartbreaking because they may be injured in ways that degrade the quality of their entire lives.
The injury could be caused before birth by failing to recognize serious medical conditions in the mother that might jeopardize delivery. It could be caused during delivery by depriving the baby of oxygen. Or it can be caused by poor postnatal care.
Sometimes there will be signs of these injuries right after delivery. The baby might be sluggish, not respond normally to stimuli, or might be blue due to a lack of oxygen.
Other times, the injury may not be obvious until the child is older and has failed to meet certain developmental milestones.
Again, for this type of malpractice, the parents must demonstrate that the medical professionals involved in the birth were negligent in some way. Similarly, for situations where the mother’s condition resulted in damage to the child. There has to be a failure to warn the mother that her illness could affect the child or failure to diagnose a condition that could harm the child.
This is another situation that may require expert witness testimony.
Takeaway
Medical errors like these can rob you of your health, your peace of mind, and possibly your life. If you think you or a relative may have had any of these happen to you, it may be time to talk to someone about it.
Ellen Diamond did her degree in psychology at the University of Edinburgh. She has a particular interest in mental health and well-being.
