Medical Malpractice
Is there a case where you had to suffer due to the laxity of a doctor? Any professional negligence on the part of a medical practitioner can be termed as Medical Malpractice. The law helps you seek compensation for any case of injury or death of a patient due to sheer omission of action or a mistake by the health care provider.
Medical mistakes are too common and the exact statistical estimates would be hard to find. It is a shocker that such a vast and stretched out industry is suffering from so many errors. Most of these incidents go unreported and yet other estimates show that nearly 42% of people believe that they have personally experienced medical malpractice.
Medical malpractice could occur due to various reasons like:
- Inherent impossibility of doctors to give a completely accurate medical care.
- General difficulties in the medical industry like lack of funds, over burdened doctors and nurses, or slow adoption of latest technologies etc.
- Simple human errors of doctors like poor dosage or poor handwriting.
- Patient mistakes like failure or delay in reporting symptoms, dishonesty of patients, non-compliance of treatment procedures etc.
- Pharmacist mistakes like dispensing wrong dosage or wrong medication and failure to communicate instructions on taking medication.
Once you realize you are a victim of medical malpractice, you need to take some steps. Remember that there is a specific fixed period of time called the ‘limitation period’ within which you need to file suit. An initial investigation on your part will help to reveal whether some negligence was actually involved on the doctor’s part and what extent of injury you had to suffer as a consequence. The next step involves filing a suit against those whom you consider responsible for such negligence. Getting dispositions from the parties, lay witnesses, expert witnesses, and preparing written discoveries is the next step after that. Thereafter you can discuss negotiations and settlements with your lawyer. If that fails you can proceed to trial in the court of law. All these steps require the expert guidance and service of a competent, experienced lawyer to win your case.
To win a case, you need to be able to present ample proof in that regard. Generally a claimant should be able to provide the following proof:
- The health care provider was actually owing a duty towards the patient
- The health care provider did happen to breach his duty
- As a consequence of above the patient had to suffer an injury
- The injury caused to the patient was an immediate cause of the health provider’s breach.
You may have lots of doubts in your mind when it comes to filing suit in a medical malpractice case. You can try to get out-of-court settlement to prevent more hassles for yourself. Most law firms ask you to pay nothing till you have recovered your settlement and hence hiring a lawyer for your case always makes sense. Remember that a consent form does not give the health provider a reason to commit malpractice and you have every right to fight any injustice meted out to you by using the professional services of an expert attorney.