Every medical practitioner is expected to follow some safe and ethical standards to protect their patients’ health conditions and life. A tiny medical error can cost a person’s life or cause irreversible health damage.
If your medical professional make any mistake, you can file for a medical malpractice claim. While some mistakes and claims that follow are experienced on a frequent basis, others are rare, which is why you must stay informed. Here are some common examples of medical malpractice that you should be aware of.
1. Improper Diagnosis
Improper or late diagnosis of a disease or medical condition is a common phenomenon across the globe. This results in complicated medical issues or loss of life. Most of the time, negligence of the doctor or practitioner results in the misdiagnosis of a patient’s actual condition, which delays the treatment process and complicates the patient’s condition. While some doctors are unable to diagnose the medical issue due to missing signs or certain conditions, you simply cannot ignore an improper diagnosis. If you feel that your medical practitioner was negligent or incompetent to diagnose your situation based on your previous experience, you can file for a medical malpractice claim.
2. Wrong Drug Prescription
Depending on the errors of a drug prescription, the patient may develop serious allergic reactions or health issues. In extreme cases, wrong drug prescriptions also caused the loss of life. Such errors include wrong medicine or drug prescription, the inability to recognize allergic reactions caused by certain medicines, little or extreme drug dosage, and the inability to recognize signs of addiction or drug abuse. A patient may suffer due to wrong drug prescription either because of their medical practitioner or the pharmacist who failed to provide the right medicines as mentioned in the prescription. This includes wrongful drug administration as well.
3. Errors with Childbirth
The process of childbirth involves various stages, right from the diagnosis to the actual birth of the child. This includes stages like screening, sonography, planning, regular checkups, drugs and diet prescription, childbirth, and aftercare. If you don’t have the country’s best healthcare providers in your area, consider traveling to Washington DC, where you can easily find the highest-rated doctors. Since there are so many stages involved, a patient must be extra careful when choosing their doctor and medical facility. From misread ultrasounds to improper childbirth procedures, there are a lot of stages involved, which increases the chance of medical malpractice. If you find yourself in a similar situation, hire a professional lawyer to fight for your claim. Look for local attorneys and find relevant information on their website to stay prepared. Submit your medical records to your attorney, provide necessary details, and let your lawyer take it from there.
4. Issues Related to Surgery
Surgical errors are the scariest, and sadly, extremely common medical malpractice that puts hundreds of patients in danger every year. Since patients already fear going under the knife, surgeons and concerned medical practitioners need to be extra careful when performing a surgery, especially if it involves operating on a delicate area. Some common surgical errors involve the formation of lacerations in other body parts, leaving foreign objects such as scissors and gauze inside the patient’s body, or operating on the wrong body part. These errors are often caused due to less experience, poor knowledge of the patient’s medical history, operating under influence of alcohol or restlessness, or miscommunication among the surgeons.
5. Anaesthetic Malpractice
The wrong dosage of anesthesia can wake you up during the surgery or put you in an unconscious state for a long. Either way, anesthetic malpractice can be extremely scary and harmful for the patient. We all fear undergoing any form of surgery due to the complications involved and the pain that follows after the procedure. If you are given little to no dosage of anesthesia, you will wake up during the operation and feel the pain. This, in turn, makes you eligible to file for a medical malpractice claim. In extreme cases, some patients have even suffered from brain damage or death due to a higher dosage, which makes this claim extremely serious.
6. Unclear Instructions or Improper Treatment
If a patient is not treated properly or is discharged too soon, they can file a claim stating the failure to treat. It also includes the inability to treat a patient with utmost care. Being negligent can result in the loss of life or irreversible physical or mental health damage in any patient. Furthermore, this medical malpractice claim involves providing incorrect medical tests, wrong follow-up care, and handling more patients than the doctor can actually handle.
If your doctor, nurse, surgeon, or any other medical practitioner fails to meet the safety standards, consider filing a medical malpractice claim. As mentioned, take help from a professional to make the process easier. Most importantly, think twice before choosing your medical practitioner and take advice from experienced individuals to pick a reputed medical facility.
