You should trust your doctor to provide you with safe, efficient and effective medical care. Yet, the sad reality is that doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals sometimes make mistakes that leave patients with significant harm.
Victims of medical malpractice can be left with serious debilitating injuries that last a lifetime, while others may suffer from a worsened medical condition from which they’ll never recover.
If you’ve been affected by a medical error, then chances are that your doctor and their employer will argue that they’re not responsible for your harm. That’s why you have to know the law, how it applies to your set of circumstances, and what you can do to protect your interests.
How common are surgical errors?
Your first stop is to gain an understanding of the commonality of surgical errors. According to some studies, about 400,000 patients suffer otherwise preventable harm at the hands of their medical professionals. About 100,00 people die each year from preventable medical mistakes. About 4,000 of these incidences involve surgical errors. This is a significant number.
Those who are fortunate enough survive this medical malpractice often have years or even decades of recovery ahead of them, too, if they’re even able to recover at all. This means that victims are often left to deal with physical, emotional, and financial devastation.
How do these errors occur?
There are a lot of ways that surgical and other medical errors occur. However, medical malpractice is basically broken down into two categories: failure to take action and harm caused by erroneous actions. Any of the following, then, may contribute to a surgical mistake that leaves you seriously harmed:
- Fatigue
- Burnout
- Distraction
- Intoxication
- Failure to properly read medical records
- Inadequate consideration of medical history
- Inattentiveness
- Poor communication
- Inadequate sanitation
There are other issues that could contribute to your harm, too. To discover how your incident occur, then, you’ll need to fully investigate the circumstances and how your medical professional’s behavior stacks up to the applicable standard of care.
How do you prove your medical malpractice case?
If you suspect that your injuries were caused by a negligent doctor, then you may be justified in taking legal action to find accountability and recover compensation. But if you want to be successful on your claim, then you need to know how to build your case. This includes not only gathering evidence from your medical records and witness statements, but also securing expert testimony. This expert testimony can help you establish the applicable standard of care and how your doctor may have deviated from it in an unsafe fashion.
Part of your case’s preparation should be anticipating the defense’s arguments, too. Therefore, you’ll want to consider how your own medical history could’ve contributed to your condition and how your medical professional’s own experts may testify. If you overlook these portions of your case, then you could end up seeing your claim denied.
Do you need help fighting for the outcome you deserve?
If you want to increase your chances of recovering compensation for your losses, then you need to have strong legal arguments on your side. But focusing on doing that can be hard to do when all you want is to focus on your recovery and reclaiming as much of your day-to-day life as you can salvage.
That’s where a legal professional’s assistance may prove beneficial. One of these advocates can help guide you in your case and craft the persuasive arguments that you need to confidently move forward with your case. If you want that kind of representation on your side sooner rather than later, then now is the time to reach out to a legal professional to discuss your case further.