Senior Partner
A medical malpractice case is any case that results when a medical provider’s acts of omission or failure in the duty of care towards a patient result in injuries and losses for that patient. For many patients these losses are not minor. They can mean lifelong scarring, disability, illness, or even death.
Do you think you might be a victim of a medical malpractice incident? If so, it might be useful to know the most common causes of cases like these.
Misdiagnosis
Some doctors don’t spend a lot of time with their patients. They run in and out, assuming they know exactly what’s going on. Very few doctors actually listen to what their patients have to say. Some doctors are dismissive or callous, and don’t heed patient concerns.
When this results in a misdiagnosis or a diagnosis that is delayed for long enough to cause further harm, you may have the grounds for a medical malpractice case. Failure to diagnose leads to a failure to treat, and the results are often tragic.
Surgical Mistakes
There are over 4000 preventable surgical mistakes every year.
These can include performing the wrong procedure, leaving foreign objects inside of the patient’s body, operating on the wrong part of the patient’s body, and other mishaps are much more common than most can believe.
Anesthesia can also cause dangerous errors. Anesthesiologists have caused patients to suffer heart attacks and strokes. They’ve asphyxiated patients, causing brain damage. Some unlucky patients have been left in a coma. Others have died. General anesthesia is very dangerous if a patient is not given a proper dose.
Birth Injuries
Failure to provide proper medical care during the pregnancy, labor, or delivery processes means tragic results. Children have been born with severe birth defects as a result of doctor incompetence.
Some babies have even died.
The reasons that doctors fail parents and their babies are manifold. Some fail to realize there’s anything wrong with a fetus. There are are problems with C-section procedures and problems with common tools like forceps or clamps.
Medication Errors
Medication must be administered in its proper dosages or it is practically poison. Giving patients the wrong medication, or the right medication but in the wrong amounts, can cause lasting harm, or even death.
Doctors can also cause medication errors when they fail to ask the patient about other medicines they may be taking. Contraindications can kill.
The problem has become ubiquitous enough for the FDA to start exploring methods to help prevent the problem from happening quite so often. For example, they’re exploring the use of standardized medication bottles for different sizes of medication to make it easier to see when one is choosing the proper dose.
Poor Documentation
In settings like hospitals where multiple people will be attending to a patient’s needs, proper documentation is paramount. This ensures that everyone knows what care the patient has and has not received, what medicines the patient has and has not taken.
Medical providers may chafe at having to perform record keeping, but it can be a lifesaving exercise. In cases where there aren’t sufficient notes to track the patient’s care we have been able to successfully prove that a medical malpractice event took place.
Faulty Medical Equipment
Manufacturing and design errors can plague medical equipment just like they can plague every other piece of technology sold on the market today. When this equipment fails it’s not the provider that gets held responsible, but the manufacturer.
They were still negligent, so they should still be held accountable for your suffering.
You don’t have to do any guesswork.
Not sure whether your case counts as a medical malpractice case? Reach out to Miller, Montiel, and Strano today.
Our free case review process will help determine whether it makes sense to move forward with a lawsuit. Don’t wait. The longer you wait the harder it is to win your case.
Contact us today.
See also:
What You Need to Prove in Your Long Island Medical Malpractice Case
