In some occupations, you cannot have a bad day. One such example is the medical field. Mistakes can lead to serious damage. It can create costly mistakes that seriously impact someone’s financial well-being. In more extreme scenarios, mistakes can seriously injure or even kill someone.
In its most extreme form, medical malpractice may need to go through a criminal court. Gross negligence can be a crime. Sometimes, doctors cause willful harm to their patients. These matters must be handled by the authorities, leading to arrests, trials, and possibly incarceration.
Criminal justice is a good, necessary way to protect society. However, individual victims can still be left without assistance. An injury can alter the course of your life and completely upend your ability to work.
Here are 4 indications that someone has experienced medical malpractice.
1. Doctors Gave You an Incorrect Diagnosis
Sometimes, ailments closely resemble one another. It’s easy for even the most qualified professional to confuse one sickness for another. Unfortunately, even the slightest misdiagnosis can create lasting damage to the patient.
Medicines, treatments, and procedures are designed to attack specific problems. Undergoing the wrong treatment or taking the wrong medicines can directly injure someone. Afterward, that person is still suffering from the original problem, as they have not been treated for it. Now they are also suffering from any new complications derived from incorrect treatments.
2. Doctors Gave You Improper Treatment
Just as damaging, you may have symptoms or illnesses that are ignored. This can happen through clerical errors, where someone neglects to input your full diagnosis and needs. This could also be the result of a doctor simply doing a poor job. They could focus heavily on one aspect of your treatment and give little attention to another.
Untreated problems often grow worse, and if you’ve experienced this issue, you are the victim of medical malpractice.
3. Doctors Prescribed the Wrong Medication
If you are taking the wrong medicine, you could be injured on two levels. First, your initial problem is going unaddressed. This could cause it to get worse over time.
Next, you could experience injury from side effects. Virtually all medications produce other symptoms, and a good prescription takes this fact into account. Doctors may give you a battery of medicines and suggestions to keep the worst of those effects at bay. If, however, you’re experiencing unexpected side effects from the wrong medicine, you could suffer a serious, long-term injury.
4. Surgeons Made a Mistake
This form of malpractice is possibly the most terrifying and the most harmful. Surgeons have been guilty of leaving tools inside a wound, creating damage that requires more surgery to fix. Clerical errors could cause someone to operate on the wrong body part or even the wrong person.
Once again, this situation leaves two different problems. The first is that you did not receive the surgery you needed to correct the initial problem. The second is that you’re now suffering from new injuries inflicted by the unnecessary surgery.
Get Help from an Attorney
Filing a medical malpractice claim is complicated. Doctors have many legal barriers that can protect them from compensating those they’ve harmed.
Furthermore, their lawyers will employ clever arguments to make injuries appear to be your fault. They may claim that you assumed the risk of treatment or your procedure. Attorneys may argue that your injuries are an unavoidable consequence of your treatment. Sometimes, doctors claim that their egregious actions were an intentional attempt at revolutionary medicine.
If you’ve been the victim of medical malpractice, you should seek the services of a qualified attorney to help. They can counter the plaintiff’s defenses, and they can employ their strong investigative skills. A good attorney can sift through the documentation, helping pinpoint where, when, and how the malpractice occurred.
Our firm is here for the victims of malpractice. For a free consultation, you can call our firm today at (270) 783-8311. You may also contact us online.