The Top Five Medical Mistakes

The Top Five Medical Mistakes

Roughly a quarter of a million Americans die each year from medical errors. For each person who passes away, countless other lives are disrupted, and families must deal with a loved one with major medical issues.

Medical professionals you trust with your well-being may not live up to that trust in several harmful ways. No matter what type of error occurred, there is no excuse for a doctor or another medical professional who does not exercise the proper standard of care and, therefore, injures a patient. These professionals should be accountable for the harm they cause.

If you or a loved one has suffered an injury by medical malpractice, you may be entitled to compensation for your various losses. You should never wait to consult a medical malpractice attorney near you about a possible case.

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Medication Errors

How medical professionals prescribe and administer medications can be a matter of life and death. All it takes is one small error to cause a major injury and perhaps even a fatal overdose. The risks are even higher when the patient takes several medications.

Up to 14 percent of hospital patients are reported victims of medication errors. These errors usually stem from the medical professionals involved in the medication prescription or administration process. Doctors may simply not learn enough about the patient’s history before prescribing a medication. Nurses might also make mistakes when recording medication administration, leading to skipped or double doses.

Common medication errors include:

• Prescriptions: Doctors prescribe the wrong medication for a certain patient or may not screen other medications they are taking to detect any possible conflict. The doctor may prescribe a medication that can cause an allergic reaction because they do not know the patient’s history.
• Dosage: Doctors can prescribe the wrong dosage for a patient, sometimes giving them more than their system can handle.
• Lack of Communication: Patients may not receive complete instructions about when and how to safely use the medication. Then, the patient might make an error themselves at home because they do not know how and when to take their medications and what to avoid.
• Administration: Patients might receive their medication at the wrong time, either in close proximity to other drugs where there can be a reaction or when it may not help them. The patient can receive the wrong medication or an incorrect dosage.
• Omission: The doctor should have prescribed a certain medication that would help the patient, but they failed to do so. Nurses might also miss a critical dose of medication, putting the patient’s condition at risk.

Doctors may not be the only ones to blame for medication errors. You may also sue the hospital or pharmacy for their role in the error.

Failure to Diagnose or Misdiagnosis

Some statistics suggest that failure to diagnose conditions is a major cause of death in the United States. There are estimates that up to 80,000 people each year may die from misdiagnosis or the failure to diagnose a certain condition. Unfortunately, patients may only learn that the doctor made a mistake when it is too late to help them. In some cases, the family may learn that the doctor made a mistake from an autopsy after the patient has died.

Patients rely on doctors to make timely and accurate diagnoses of their medical conditions so they can receive proper treatment. If the doctor diagnoses the wrong condition or fails to learn what is wrong with the patient in a timely manner, it can be life-threatening.

Specifically, diagnostic errors can include the following:

• Delayed diagnosis: Had the doctor been appropriately diligent, they should have caught the condition earlier. One of the leading examples of delayed diagnosis is when the doctor fails to detect cancer in enough time to treat it.
• Wrongful diagnosis: The patient may be told they have a different condition from the actual problem. For example, the patient may have been told that their back pain is from a disc problem when they really have cancer.
• Missed diagnosis: The doctor misses signs of a medical issue. They may never order the appropriate tests, or they may discharge a patient from the hospital when they should have caught the condition that led to more serious injuries or death.

Poor Postoperative Care

Although the patient may have survived the initial surgery, they suffer harm from deficient postoperative care. Roughly seven to 15 percent of patients who have surgical procedures will suffer from some type of postoperative complication. Not every complication is a natural result of the procedure. Postoperative care provided in hospitals, surgical centers, or doctor’s offices is crucial.

Infections are among the most common postoperative complications. Up to four percent of patients who have undergone surgery will develop an infection. Roughly one in every ten ICU deaths is the result of a post-surgical infection. The surgical site might become infected because staff did not take proper preventative measures or the patient was not given adequate instructions.

The patient may not necessarily be injured immediately from postoperative complications. Patients have an increased risk of death by up to 60 percent in the year after the accident.

Postoperative care negligence can also include sending a patient home too soon after surgery. Hospitals often want to discharge patients because they fear insurance companies may not pay for the full cost of care. They may be under pressure to discharge patients before they are ready.

Doctors must uphold the same standard of care after your surgery as they do during the procedure. The same standard applies to hospitals and all medical professionals who work there.

Surgical Errors

Doctors and medical professionals can make several errors at any point during the surgical process. Some of these errors can be more egregious than others. Surgical errors include:

• Operating on the wrong body part
• Performing an unnecessary surgery
• Performing surgery on the wrong patient
• Administering the wrong medication or dosage of anesthesia during the surgery
• Failure to use proper hygiene standards during surgery
• Making an error during the surgery that can result in excessive bleeding, nerve damage, or hemorrhaging 
• Leaving foreign objects in the patient’s body
• Failure to communicate instructions to the medical staff administering postoperative care

Some of these errors will very obviously be due to negligence. Then, the issue will be negotiating the appropriate amount of compensation in a settlement or persuading the jury to award you enough damages.

In other cases, you might be challenging a judgment call the doctor made when they were performing the surgery. You need to show what the doctor specifically did in the moment, and that can be difficult because they may not have clear records of everything that happened during the surgery. You need a highly skilled medical malpractice attorney to help prove your surgical error and malpractice claim.

Birth Injuries

Unfortunately, birth injuries are some of the more common examples of medical malpractice. Birth injuries happen in as many as seven out of every 1,000 live births. Both mothers and children can suffer catastrophic consequences because the doctor has failed to uphold their own duty of care. Birth injuries can occur because of the doctor’s carelessness in providing prenatal care or an error that they made in the labor and delivery room.

Examples of negligence that can lead to birth injuries include:

• Failure to diagnose a complication in the mother that can injure the unborn child or cause a difficult delivery
• Failure to diagnose a maternal infection at any point
• Not spotting signs of fetal distress, either when the child is in utero or during the delivery
• The failure to perform a c-section, either not making the proper decision before the mother goes into labor or not performing the surgery in enough time when there are complications during the delivery. 
• Errors in using the vacuum or the forceps
• Mistakes in the actual delivery of the baby

Birth injury cases can often lead to substantial settlements or awards because the child might live the rest of their life with the injury. Parents need to secure enough money to provide for the child for the rest of their life. Again, doctors often aggressively fight birth injury lawsuits because they know that families may be due a very large amount of money.

Medical Malpractice Lawsuits Can Be Very Difficult

Remember that medical malpractice cases are some of the toughest and most drawn-out personal injury lawsuits. Hospitals and insurance companies often fight you with everything they have for as long as possible. These cases are extremely high stakes because medical malpractice verdicts and settlements can be substantial. You can expect that a medical malpractice case will take months or years from beginning to end, and you must be patient.

It is extremely difficult to win this type of case without the help of a skilled medical malpractice lawyer. Your attorney can do the following in your case:

• Review medical records and work with expert witnesses to establish witnesses
• Estimate the value of damages so you know how much money to seek in a lawsuit
• Build your case through the discovery part of the lawsuit process
• Negotiate a settlement with the defendant, or try your case in court in front of a jury.

Working with expert witnesses is perhaps the most critical function that your lawyer will perform. That is the basis for practically your entire case. Your lawyer must take a jury back to the operating room or doctor’s office and reconstruct exactly what the doctor did wrong. After all, it is your responsibility to prove that the doctor departed from the standard of care expected of them under the circumstances. The expert will review what the doctor did and compare it with what they should have done to show where they fell short.

Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Damages

If you can prove fault in your medical malpractice case, your damages can be substantial. First, you are dealing with a doctor or hospital that likely has a large amount of insurance to pay out your lawsuit. Hospitals are often sued for malpractice and have protection against such liability. Second, you likely have suffered serious injuries that may have changed the course of your life. You may have even lost a loved one from medical malpractice, and your family is not seeking compensation.

Your medical malpractice lawsuit damages can include the following:

• Medical expenses (including the cost of any procedure you need to repair the damage that the doctor caused)
• Lost wages
• Pain and suffering
• Scarring and disfigurement
• Embarrassment and humiliation
• Loss of enjoyment of life

Punitive damages are part of what makes your lawsuit damages very high. If your medical malpractice lawyer can persuade the jury that the doctor acted with gross negligence or recklessness, they can try to make an example out of them through a large verdict. If the doctor acted extremely carelessly, it can give you more leverage in settlement negotiations.

You should hire a personal injury attorney as soon as possible after you have suffered an injury, knowing that you have a long fight ahead of you. A lawyer needs to review your medical records and investigate what happened to put you in the strongest legal position possible when you file a lawsuit.

Seek your free consultation with a medical malpractice lawyer today.