When a child suffers a serious injury, a lifelong disability or death as a result of a medical error, it is understandable that the child’s family suffers significant emotional trauma. Many parents experience a gamut of emotions from anger to desperation. But the main thing the parents of a child who has been injured or disabled because of medical negligence want to know how they can protect their child’s rights and what resources they will need now and in the future. The best place to turn is an experienced medical malpractice attorney.
Pediatric Malpractice Negligence
Pediatric negligence can occur at any time. It could involve negligent neonatal care or misdiagnosis of cancer or failure to diagnose heart disease in teenage children. Most pediatric malpractice cases are extremely complicated and are even difficult for an attorney to properly handle. Doctors and hospitals may not be forthcoming with the information that you need to file a malpractice claim on behalf of a child. They may not have even properly or truthfully explained to the parents what genuinely happened to the child to cause the injury.
A valid pediatric malpractice claim can arise as a result of injury to a child from the following medical errors:
- Complications from surgery
- Anesthesia mistakes
- Failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis
- Avoidable birth trauma
- Pediatric burn injury cases
- Negligence during postoperative recovery
- Nursing errors
- Infections
- Failure to diagnose infections
- Prescription errors
Frequent Pediatric Mistakes
As with any other medical practitioner, a pediatrician can make a wide range of mistakes when providing treatment and care to a child. However, certain issues seem to arise with greater frequency among pediatricians, often causing serious harm or even the death of a child. This malpractice on a child includes:
- Failure to diagnose pneumonia
- Failure to diagnose infection
- Misdiagnosis of meningitis
- Misdiagnosis of appendicitis
- Medication errors
In some States a child’s medical malpractice claim does not have to be filed until two years after the child’s 18th birthday. It is then important to collect and review all of the child’s medical records, testing reports, evidence, documents and details of financial damages before you file your malpractice claim. That way the parent is in a better position to recover the compensation the child may rightfully deserve.
Medical Record Keeping
Complete and accurate records should have been kept by the treating physician and any hospital or medical facility where the child received care. Records should be kept for at least twenty eight years on a pediatric patient which allows the statute of limitations to run after the child reaches majority. A child may institute a lawsuit concerning injuries he suffered as a minor after he reaches the age of majority. He is also given an additional ten year period in which he may still “discover” that he suffered a severe harm and injury due to medical malpractice while still a minor.
Medical Malpractice Lawyer and Attorney
Generally there is no special area of law addressing pediatric malpractice injury. Once a fetus is born and is a life separate from its mother it is considered a full person for the purpose of the law. The same medical malpractice law will apply to a child as to an adult. There for any experienced malpractice attorney will be qualified to handle the claim of an injury to a child by a medical care provider or treatment facility. Some lawyers may have a greater amount of experience with pediatric clients and malpractice claims. The main difference is how the claim is handled by an experience malpractice and not the law applied by courts concerning the age of the claimant. In fact, it may be of significant importance the level of expertise of the pediatric expert used to make the judge and jury fully aware of the magnitude of the child’s injury and the adverse effects that injury may have on a life of an young one just beginning his journey.
