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Is medical abandonment a form of malpractice?
A friend of mine was seeing a doctor for some kind of abdominal problem. After some time, the doctor stopped seeing him because he felt my friend was not really sick, and only trying to get drugs, despite his complaints of severe pain. Well, a few weeks later my friend had to undergo emergency bowel surgery and died in the process.
I've been researching medical malpractice for his wife, because we feel the doctor should have found this problem weeks before he died.
Is the fact that the doctor abandoned treatment a type of medical negligence that his wife could sue him for? She is now a single mother and struggling not only with the emotional loss, but the financial stress of raising three children on her own. Does she have any legal options in this case?
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Answers
Medical abandonment, or patient abandonment is a form of medical negligence. In order to establish patient abandonment, two things must be proven. 1. That the doctor was treating the patient and had a duty to continue, and 2. the doctor terminated the treatment prior to completion.
A doctor has a duty, which is established upon agreeing to treat a patient, to continue that treatment to its completion, or to transfer the patient to a more specialized doctor if necessary. If the doctor breaches this duty by abandoning the patient before he is well again, then the he is negligent and liable for any damages or injury his negligent treatment causes the patient.
Yours seems like a legitimate case, and your should tell your friends wife to talk to a medical malpractice lawyer. Alternatively, if you would like to help her, you can contact several medical malpractice attorneys on this site and tell them the situation. This way you can give her some professional legal advice and let her know that she has some options to get compensation to help her get move on with her life.
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Posted by Staff Writer on 02 Feb 2010
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