In any situation where a patient enters under the care of a medical professional, the medical professional is legally obligated to provide the patient evaluation and treatment at a standard of care. The legal obligation owed to a patient, known as duty of care, requires a doctor to provide medical services at or above a standard of care, whether in evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, surgery, or any other professional medical service. This is the first of many laws in place protecting patients during surgery, a legal requirement to provide professional standard of care in surgical procedures.
What Happens if Surgery Fails to Meet Standard of Care?
In thousands of cases across the United States each year, patients ultimately decide the surgery procedure they endured did not meet a standard of care. Again, the standard of care will widely vary based on the type of surgery performed, the specific patient, and other factors, but common reasons for a patient to suspect their procedure did not meet a standard of care includes:
- Surgical mistakes, which can include gross errors such as wrong site surgery to other surgical errors such as accidental perforation of an organ, nerve damage, or artery damage
- Anesthetic error, including any number of damages or medical injuries sustained by a patient due to errors in anesthetic, which include those related to patient’s regaining consciousness during a procedure, as well as others
- Post-operative care mistakes, including hospital acquired infections, prescription drug mistakes, and other physical trauma endured by patients as the result of post-operative care negligence
- Unnecessary surgery, which entails a patient undergoing a surgical procedure under false or erroneous pretenses, such as in the case of misdiagnosis and other diagnostic errors
Should a given surgical procedure, at any point and in any form, fail to meet a standard of care, the only recourse for patients, in a legal sense, is to file suit against the negligent parties. Medical malpractice in all fifty states allows recovery for damages as the result of negligent surgical procedures and medical care. The ability to do so, however, will widely vary and only a consultation with an attorney about the specific nature of an individual’s personal surgical malpractice claims case can be used to make a determination on their legal options.
Getting Legal Help with Medical Malpractice in Surgery
By consulting with a lawyer, patients are taking a critical step to learning more about and protecting their legal rights following a perceived incident of surgical medical malpractice. Only through a lawyer can patients ascertain whether they have grounds to make viable malpractice claims, and in turn, continue to pursue their right to recover damages in the courts.
