Patients put their faith and depend on the doctor’s knowledge to recover from their health issues. However, sometimes a patient is harmed by the medical professionals’ negligence. In such cases, a patient can sue the doctor. Since it is a legal process, the patient must seek Miami medical negligence lawyer advice.
It takes many years of constant studying and researching to become a doctor. Furthermore, a doctor is expected to stay updated with innovations in the medical field. If a doctor is negligent, a patient can suffer from severe consequences like amputations, birth injuries, burns, prolonged recovery, and unnecessary surgeries, medical tests, and procedures arising from negligence.
Common Types of Medical Negligence
A lack of staff
Many hospitals do not have required number of staff. The patients are more but the staff needed to treat them is less. In such cases, employees end up with more responsibilities, exhaustion and decreased efficiency, which in turn induce mistakes and irresponsibility.
Misdiagnosis
Sometimes, a medical professional might fail to diagnose a condition that a competent doctor would have recognized. If there is delay in diagnosing, the condition might progress to an advanced stage, which might need a bigger treatment causing the patient a lot of suffering. In cases like cancer, a late or inaccurate diagnosis results in patient’s death. If someone wants to claim for this type of negligence, they should come with an expert testimony from an expert who can explain why another competent doctor treating a patient with similar condition would have diagnosed it correctly and on time. The expert would also need to describe the effect of the delay or error on the patient’s health.
Surgical and anesthesia errors
Some types of surgical errors are termed as never event, i.e. such errors should never happen. Common examples include leaving a sponge or any surgical equipment inside the patient’s body. A surgeon may operate a wrong body part or a wrong patient. They may also injure a patient’s another body part in the process.
Anesthesia is an important part of the surgical process, which is sometimes taken for granted. Some grievous mistakes can cause brain injuries or death. An anesthesiologist may fail to give the patient proper instructions, fail to review records of patient aptly, fail to monitor vital signs of the patient while administering anesthesia or provide wrong amount of anesthesia.
A patient is allowed to claim for the above-mentioned errors if they are able to prove the doctor’s negligence.
Birth injuries
Medical professionals like obstetricians, gynecologists involved in the process of childbirth can cause permanent harm to newborns by not meeting the professional standard of care. Conditions like paralysis, nerve damage, cerebral palsy, fractures, and developmental disorders may be a result of negligence.
Inadequate prenatal care to both mother and child may also cause significant harm to them. During delivery, the inability to call for a caesarean section on time, use equipment like forceps properly, handle complications well, are also a part of negligence.
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