After several doctors, a few medications, and a handful of diagnoses, Jenny’s unbearable stomach pain has not stopped. It all started after she had gallbladder surgery. She finally gets an answer when an x-ray reveals that the surgeon left a sponge inside her abdominal cavity! Her friend advises her to contact a physician malpractice attorney.
Jenny’s story may be fictional, but physician malpractice is an all too serious reality. Up to 120,000 people die due to medical malpractice each year. How can you protect yourself and your loved ones from this dire situation? By learning as much as you can.
What Is Physician Malpractice?
Doctors and other medical professionals are people too, so they make plenty of mistakes. Due to the serious nature of medical care, a mistake can result in a patient’s death or serious injury. However, medical malpractice goes beyond making a simple mistake. Medical malpractice is a legal term that describes specific types of wrongdoing on the part of a medical professional.
There are three standards for categorizing a wrong action as medical malpractice. First, the medical professional must have acted outside the standard of care. In all professions, there is a standard way of doing things, and there are common procedures that are safe and sound. Doctors, nurses, anesthetists, and other medical professionals are expected to follow their respective standards of care. When a physician’s actions deviate from their standard, this could be a case of medical malpractice.
Beyond failing to measure up to best practices, a medical professional must also be negligent for an action to be legally considered at fault. Negligence happens when a person fails to do something that another reasonable person in their position would have done. For a patient to sue for medical malpractice, the physician’s negligent actions must be harmful to said patient. Negligence that does not result in harm does not qualify as physician malpractice.
The third standard for medical malpractice is that the patient’s harm must be significant. There are hundreds of ways that a physician’s negligent actions can harm a patient, but medical malpractice lawsuits are for actions that led to a significant loss in quality of life or money.
Suppose a surgeon goes from one operating room to another without washing their soiled hands. Due to the surgeon’s negligence, the second patient they operated on developed a bloodborne illness that the first patient had. Now, the second patient will need medical treatment for the rest of their life. This is an example of medical malpractice because the surgeon negligently failed to follow the standard of care. The result of this action was serious and caused lifelong harm to the patient that will require expensive medical care.
How Does Physician Malpractice Affect Patients?
Physician malpractice affects patients in two key ways. First of all, the patients who are victims of physician malpractice experience the injury and all the problems that result from it. Secondarily, all patients, even those who are never victims of physician malpractice, experience the effects of physician malpractice on the medical industry.
Physician malpractice has far-reaching consequences for the victim. Depending on how serious the instance of malpractice is, the damages that a physician causes may be irreversible.
Suppose Bob goes into the hospital for gallbladder surgery. The surgical team mixes him up with another patient who is supposed to have a leg amputation. Now, Bob has to live without his leg. He can’t perform the duties of his construction job. He needs to purchase a wheelchair, and he needs extensive renovations to his home to make it wheelchair accessible. Bob will grapple with the medical, financial, physical, and emotional toll of the surgical team’s negligence for the rest of his life.
Physician malpractice has an impact on the way all patients are treated. Due to increased rates of physician malpractice lawsuits, medical professionals purchase medical malpractice insurance. The cost of these insurance premiums trickles down to patients, and many experts view physician malpractice insurance premiums and lawsuit payouts as a huge factor in rising medical costs. Physician malpractice is such a highly publicized issue that it changes the way patients and physicians interact with each other. Some people avoid surgery or hospital treatment because they are afraid of malpractice. Some physicians do excessive treatments to prevent the accusation of malpractice.
How Does a Physician Malpractice Lawsuit Work?
To sue for physician malpractice, a negligent act that broke the standard of care must have seriously harmed a patient. In medicine, sometimes treatments do not work. Sometimes surgeries do not cure a patient of their ailment. Thousands of patients die under medical care. While these events can be devastating for patients and their families, poor results in medical care are not always instances of physician malpractice. The physician has to have either done something wrong or failed to do something right, and the patient has to be seriously harmed by the physician’s actions.
If you feel that you have been a victim of medical malpractice, you should consult an attorney as soon as possible. Some states have special provisions for physician malpractice lawsuits. There is a statute of limitations, which means you have a limited time after the injury happens to file a lawsuit. In some states, you have to give a physician written notice before suing them for malpractice. Other states require complaints of physician malpractice to go before a tribunal before going to the stage of a lawsuit.
Whether before a tribunal or a court of law, the lawsuit will involve an analysis of the facts to prove or disprove whether the physician was negligent and caused significant damage to the patient. Winning a medical malpractice lawsuit can result in a substantial payout. These types of lawsuits account for the injury, the disability it causes, the time that the injured person cannot work, and the physical and emotional problems that result.
Although stories of serious physician malpractice make headlines, millions of great medical encounters happen every day. Patients can protect themselves by reading reviews and looking for doctors who specialize in the field they need treatment in. Self-advocacy and open communication with physicians can also help patients address any fears of mistakes.
