Medical Malpractice
No one knows for sure how many people are injured or die every year due to medical malpractice. An eight-year study by John Hopkins University published in 2016 found that approximately 250,000 people die every year because of a medical error. No new study has been conducted since that date, so this is the number that is relied on by most experts. It is estimated that thousands more people are harmed in ways that affect them permanently and their lives will never be the same.
There is a distinction in medical error and medical malpractice. Not all errors rise to the level of malpractice, and being disappointed in the outcome of a medical or surgical treatment is also not the same as medical malpractice. There are elements you must prove in order to prevail on a medical malpractice claim.
What is Medical Malpractice?
Medical malpractice is when a health care professional with whom you have a provider/patient relationship is negligent by failing to provide care that meets the standard of care provided by other similar health care professionals in the community and, as a result of the negligence, you are harmed.
Although not every medical error rises to the level of malpractice, there are several common categories of medical malpractice.
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Operating Room Errors
There are many types of operating room errors. Some include:
- Operating on the wrong body part. Documented cases include amputating a healthy leg instead of the diseased one, removing a health kidney, and more.
- Operating on the wrong person.
- Performing the wrong procedure.
- Leaving a foreign body inside the patient, like a tool used in the operation.
- Improperly suturing the surgical site leading to an infection.
- Puncturing an organ.
- Clipping or severing an artery, nerve, or vein.
- Oxygen deprivation during anesthesia that leads to brain damage or death.
Failure to Properly Diagnose
This can be either a complete failure to diagnose a serious illness, making a wrong diagnosis, or telling patients they have a serious or terminal illness when they are in fact healthy.
A failure to diagnose means the patient does not get the treatment he or she needs. A wrong diagnosis results in a person either getting no treatment, or in getting treatment that is not helpful because the treatment is meant for a different disease.
An example of the harm that can come from diagnosing a patient with a serious disease when in fact the patient is healthy is demonstrated by a woman who was erroneously diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer. She had a double mastectomy and suffered through months of painful chemotherapy before it was discovered the pathology report was wrong and she did not have breast cancer at all.
Emergency Room Malpractice
Almost everyone has heard stories of people who go to the emergency room and are sent home after being told they have only a minor problem. The person then dies at home a few hours or days later. Many of these emergency room errors fall into the “failure to diagnose” category of medical malpractice.
Medication Errors
Types of medication errors include:
- The doctor prescribed the wrong medication.
- The pharmacist provided the wrong medication when filling the prescription.
- The patient was prescribed two medications that were incompatible with each other and neither the doctor nor the pharmacist caught the error.
- A hospitalized patient is given the wrong medication or the wrong dose of the correct medication.
- A hospitalized patient is given an IM medication meant to be given IV or vice versa.
Contact a Medical Malpractice Attorney
No matter how your injury occurred, if you or a loved one suffered injuries due to medical malpractice, consulting with an experienced medical malpractice attorney should be your first step. The right attorney can guide you through your options based on your specific circumstances, and the right guidance can make all the difference in securing the compensation you need.
