Medical negligence can occur when someone visits a doctor or hospital and is either mistreated, or given the wrong diagnosis of an illness. This mistreatment can be in the form of wrong medication given, medication or treatment withheld, or improper followup treatment.
If you would like to determine if medical negligence did occur, it will be vital to your case to obtain an attorney. This is the first step in determining if a doctor or hospital was negligent in the care you or your family received.
Criteria for Determining Medical Negligence
It is important to understand that medical negligence can only be determined based on specific circumstances. It may not be possible to determine negligence if you have a disease that is not curable. Simply filing a claim in this instance would not show that the doctors failed to treat you if they did everything in their power to cure the illness. There are some illnesses in which the technology or medication have not been created to treat these currently incurable diseases.
Staff With Lack of Skills
One area that medical negligence can be determined in is after you have discovered your doctor or other staff at the hospital are not skilled enough to treat you. This can occur in various circumstances and can result in minor injuries to the body or very life threatening injuries. For example, a pregnant woman seen by a doctor who is not skilled in dealing with the complications of her labor can end up with a child with mental retardation. Another example of this is the use of junior medical staff that is not skilled in administering medication. This could result in more injury or even death if the medication is lethal at higher doses.
Wrong Diagnosis
Medical negligence may be proven in circumstances where a wrong diagnosis is given. It is possible for someone to be told have cancer, and to later find out that this is not true. Another example is for someone to be told they do not have cancer, and later die as a result of complications. These can be argued as cases of medical negligence.
Supporting Medical Negligence
Your attorney will use a variety of reports, witnesses and tools to determine how negligent a doctor or hospital was in your case. The attorney might look at the previous treatment record of the doctor for any other litigation cases of negligence. They can also query if someone else treated by the hospital also suffered the same wrong diagnosis. The opinions of other medical experts will be key for your attorney to show how you are a victim of medical negligence.
