If you have an inclination to sue your doctor just because they didn’t live up to your expectations, that’s okay. Many people feel that way about their doctors.
However, just because you had a less than satisfactory experience with them doesn’t mean that you have solid grounds for a malpractice lawsuit.
Doctors often do their best to ensure that their patients get adequate treatment and help with their conditions. Sometimes, they may not be warm about it or even accommodating. In fact, some gifted doctors are anti-social. It’s got nothing to do with the patient or anyone for that matter.
It’s just who they are. But it doesn’t subtract from their ability to deliver excellent healthcare. There are individuals who sue their doctors because they were rude. Those are just frivolous cases that the review boards and courts tend to throw out.
If you feel that your doctor has actually harmed you with their actions –intentionally or unintentionally- then you might actually have a case.
There are certain elements necessary for the filing of a successful medical malpractice suit. Without these requirements, you’ll just end up wasting your time, energy and resources. Understanding these requirements will help you see if you actually have a real case and a chance of getting the compensation that’s due to you or a loved one.
Is There a Clear Case of Negligence?
With the growing number of infections, injuries, harm, and death related to medical negligence, most medical malpractice lawsuits are centered on this. Medical negligence is when your doctor’s actions inadvertently result in adverse reactions, injury, infection and even death.
You’ll need solid proof that your doctor’s medical negligence directly caused you to suffer while you were in their care. You’ll have to show that if another equally competent doctor had handled your case, chances are they wouldn’t have been that careless or made the mistakes that your doctors made.
The truth is negligence is usually about determining is the doctor carefully and skillfully carried out their duties. It’s not about whether they’re the best in their field or the hospital. This is what the medical review board will look at when your Malpractice Attorney Brooklyn files a medical lawsuit on your behalf.
Every doctor is expected to adhere to and carry out their duties in line with an established standard of care. Any doctor that falls short of this standard can be held liable for the pains that the patient undergoes.
Did the Errors Results in Injury, Harm and Damage?
You’ll need to clearly establish that the doctor’s or healthcare professional’s carelessness or negligence caused you some harm. The evidence can be anything from mild to very severe. As long as you suffered instead of getting better under their care, you may have a medical lawsuit case.
For instance, if because of a wrong prescription, your health took a turn for the worse while you were with them, you may have grounds for suing them. Another example is if they didn’t sow you up properly after surgery, and the cut opened up while you were at home.
There are many examples. The most important thing is if there were a direct injury and damage caused by their actions, you have a right to sue them so you can be adequately compensated for the pains, damage and trauma.
No Informed Consent
All doctors are mandated to give you the full details about any procedure and treatment they’ll be giving you. In fact, they’ll need your consent to proceed with the procedure. This is because new information might actually influence your decision to either give or withdraw your consent.
If during the process of informing you, they leave out vital information that you would have needed to weigh your decision, then they can be liable to a lawsuit.
A good example of this is a patient going to the hospital because they have a benign lump in their breast. And because the person has a genetic predisposition to breast cancer, the doctor recommends a mastectomy immediately, while leaving out crucial information that the benign tumor may be there for years and not cause any harm.
In this case, that patient can file for a malpractice suit because them knowing that the lump was benign may have caused them to hold off on the mastectomy until a later date.
The point is that you must have incontrovertible evidence that the pains, injury and hurt that you went through were directly as a result of the doctor’s negligence and errors.
There’s got to be proof that if the circumstances had been the same with another doctor in charge, you wouldn’t have had to undergo the suffering you did, because the doctor would have given you all the facts and information, and allowed you make your decision, instead of making them for you.
