During post-surgical care, a patient is still owed a duty of care from all attending medical professionals and the hospital facility where he or she is receiving post-operative care. Should a patient endure medical negligence during their post-operative care and sustain damages as the result, he or she most likely has grounds for a viable medical malpractice lawsuit. The following article outlines how to determine if medical negligence played a role in your post-operative care complications.
A Reasonable Margin of Error Can Be Expected
The current state of modern medicine and the applicable malpractice statutes in each state seek to hold medical professionals to a legal responsibility to provide competent and successful medical care, while at the same time, acknowledging that medicine involves inherent shortcomings that simply cannot reasonably prevent certain complications. As a patient, determining whether negligence played a role in post-operative care complications is likely the deciding factor in whether one has a viable medical malpractice claims case.
Duty of Care, Breach, and Determinations of Negligence
Patients in post-operative care are owed a duty of care from any attending medical professional. This means that a patient is owed the right to receive reasonably competent and accurate post-operative care from attending parties. What constitutes reasonable or accurate post-operative care, however, can only be determined by analyzing a given patient’s treatment in post-operative care in light of the applicable standard of care required in that specific case. Standard of care outlines how any other competently performing medical professional tasked with post-operative care, when faced with the exact same patient in the exact same situation, would have reacted. Should the actions of the real post-operative care individual breach the hypothetical actions required by the professional standard of care, negligence is said to have occurred.
Proving Claims of Negligence
As it may seem, proving duty of care, applicable standard of care, breach, and negligence is a complicated task, requiring insight into not only an individual patient’s case, but also, the general practices and policies of modern medicine. Most malpractice cases involving negligence claims will require patient’s using legal counsel and a medical expert witness to testify that a given patient’s post-operative care complications were the result of negligence.
Getting Legal Help with Post-Operative Care Complications
As a patient, you have legal rights to recover damages should your suffer complications as the result of post-operative care. The difficult task is proving claims in a legally viable manner, which will require the intervention of a medical malpractice lawyer. Consult with a medical malpractice lawyer to gain insight into your legal options, as well as initiate the process of recovering damages for injuries sustained as the result of post-operative care complications.
