Medical Malpractice is when a medical practitioner, like a doctor, dentist, or any other person who holds a “PhD” in their title, harms their patient unintentionally. Humans make mistakes. This is a common adage that many people know and say often. However, the trouble with being a doctor is that when they make mistakes it often directly harms an individual they were responsible for. This blog post is going to cover what medical malpractice entails and some courses of action that you can take to receive some form of compensation for your hardships.
What is Medical Malpractice Specifically?
There are many forms of medical malpractice. Sometimes it can be a failure to diagnose or it can be the wrong diagnosis. It can be a failure to provide treatment or it can be providing the wrong treatment. According to the International Journal of Medicine most causes of negligence come from system errors. We are not giving these details to create doubt or insecurity between you and your physician, but rather to bring awareness to the issue and give you examples of what medical malpractice looks like.
How Severe Do My Injuries Need to Be Before It Is Considered Malpractice?
Malpractice can be small, minor damage, or it can be a major life-changing, misconfiguration. The issue is that minor malpractice problems will rarely get accepted by an attorney. The reason being is that if your practitioner misdiagnosed your issue, and it results in a week of tummy aches, then your pain and suffering doesn’t outweigh the cost of hiring an attorney. However, if your medical practitioner misdiagnoses cancer than that’s potentially a life-time of pain and suffering which would surely get picked up by an attorney. So, all because your doctor commits malpractice doesn’t mean he’ll be sued, but some hospitals might provide compensation regardless.
What is the Process to Decide if My Medical Practitioner is Negligent?
Ultimately, it is a judge and jury who decide if your doctor is responsible for committing medical malpractice. But your attorney can also help give insight into the legitimacy of the case. The legal process is exhaustive on both sides and you can expect heavy resistance from the physician’s attorneys. The judge and jury will hear from expert witnesses, see charts and graphs, and be inundated with evidence from both sides of the case until they feel ready to provide a verdict. It can be tough to sit through these cases, since you are more than likely already dealing with your own personal life issues as well as having to reopen the same painful experience repeatedly.
Medical Malpractice cases can be tough and you don’t have to go through them alone. If you have any questions about what to do in this type of situation or you think you might have a medical malpractice case, then please give us a call at (209) 900-8200. We are more than willing to walk you through the process and answer any questions you might have.