Have you ever been involved in a medical situation where you think medical malpractice might have taken place? Have you ever wondered if what went wrong during your treatment was just some errors or actually medical malpractice? Without medical knowledge, it can sometimes be very difficult to know for sure. Medical practitioners and institutions may deny that they did anything wrong and may employ their powerful legal teams to dispute your allegations. As of today, many victims of medical malpractice can cause serious long-term emotional and physical distress, and there are many victims of medical malpractice who may never be able to find out if what happened to them was medical malpractice or not. (Image Credit: Tingey Injury Law Firm /Unsplash)
This article will introduce the six types of medical malpractice that most commonly take place.
Medical Product Malpractice
Sometimes medical devices or medicines are the causes of malpractice. For example, poorly made or faulty devices, once placed in a patient’s body, could lead to serious health issues, and sometimes even death. In other cases, the medical devices deliver false promises and do not provide the health benefits advertised, instead of worsening the patient’s medical condition.
Likewise, there have been various cases of medicines that have caused terrible side effects. One famous case is the belviq cancer lawsuit in which a weight loss pill caused many who took it to develop cancer. This is now an enormous legal dispute between the manufacturers and the patients who took it. In similar circumstances, the drug thalidomide, which was given to pregnant women to prevent morning sickness, caused major birth defects. Both of these are examples of medical product malpractice.
Misdiagnosis
Misdiagnosis happens when a doctor examines the patient but fails to give a correct diagnosis of the illness. This may lead to the wrong treatment being given to the patient, which may cause his or her condition to worsen; in some other cases, healthy people diagnosed with a disease they don’t have will have to undergo unnecessary treatment, which may adversely impact their health. However, it is important to note that misdiagnosis is only qualified as malpractice when the patient is harmed as a result of the doctor not making the same diagnosis that the majority of other doctors would have made.
A Delay in Diagnosis
A delayed diagnosis occurs when the doctor fails to provide a correct diagnosis initially, and the patient receives unnecessary or incorrect treatment that may worsen their well-being.
A case will be qualified as a delayed diagnosis if it is proven that the doctor did not perform with the level of competency that other doctors would have done in the same situation. For example, he may fail to order a test or fail to see signs of a disease on an X-ray or CT scans.
Incorrect Treatment
When a patient receives the right diagnosis but the doctor’s wrong or inadequate treatment, this case can be qualified as a failure to treat malpractice. For example, the doctor fails to give all patients the basic standard of care, or the doctor is too busy and overlooks the patient’s release, follow up care, or neglect to refer the patient to a specialist.
Surgical Mistakes
There are various examples of surgical malpractice like if a doctor performs an incorrect or unnecessary procedure resulting in a damaged organ, nerve, or tissue, or if they give the wrong amount of anesthesia, all of this is considered a mistake. Other errors, such as using non-sterile surgical equipment or leaving medical equipment inside the patient or lack of adequate care following the surgery, will also constitute malpractice. However, these errors will only be qualified as malpractice if it has a significant impact on the patient’s life. Before an operation, many patients have to sign a consent form to acknowledge risks that may arise from the operation, but that does not mean the doctor will be able to do whatever they want without any consequences.
Injury During Labor
A doctor’s negligence may cause birth injuries or even death of the baby or the mother, and this is one of the most serious kinds of medical malpractice. A birth injury is considered malpractice when the causes of those injuries could have been prevented, but the doctor failed to do so. For example, the doctor may have provided inadequate prenatal care, or he may have been negligent during childbirth, or have failed to detect the signs of post-childbirth complications.
If you or your loved ones have ever undergone a similar situation as the cases described above, you should contact an experienced medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible. The timeframe for filing a lawsuit on medical malpractice is very limited, and as much as we like to think that they were probably just errors, sometimes they are actually the results of the doctor’s negligence. Your attorney will be able to examine the details and determine whether the case may qualify as medical malpractice.