Medical malpractice is surprisingly common across the country.  While we expect doctors and hospitals to use the care and attention necessary to heal our wounds, cure our illnesses, and treat other conditions, the reality is that many mistakes and errors occur, causing harm to patients.

If you were the victim of medical malpractice, you could be entitled to compensation for what happened to you.  With the help of an experienced Belleville medical malpractice attorney, you can potentially file lawsuits and insurance claims to get financial compensation to cover the additional medical care you need and other costs of your injury.

For a free case review, contact The Carrion Law Firm’s Belleville medical malpractice attorneys today.  Call us at (718) 841-0083 to get started.

Types of Medical Malpractice

The term “medical malpractice” is a wide umbrella term used to cover nearly any situation where a doctor or other medical professional fails to care for your as their professional standards require.  More specifically, doctors and other practitioners are required to follow the “standard of care” that applies to the specific circumstances of your treatment.  When their care falls below this standard, they can be held responsible for any resulting injuries or harm.

The following cases fall into a few common categories, but our Belleville medical malpractice lawyers can also help with other types of medical malpractice cases not listed here:

Failure to Diagnose

When a doctor fails to diagnose your medical condition, you do not receive the treatment you might need.  Especially when it comes to emergency situations, this can be very dangerous or even deadly.  Doctors are often held liable for missing the early warning signs of heart attacks and strokes, which can often be prevented or have their impact reduced if the doctor properly diagnoses them in the early stages of distress.

Failure to diagnose can also be very dangerous when it comes to cancer.  If a doctor misses a cancer diagnosis, then the patient could continue to get worse, potentially becoming untreatable.

Failure to diagnose can also cause patients distress with continued symptoms.  Being told that nothing is wrong with you when you do in fact have an undiagnosed condition can also cause you mental and emotional distress.

Misdiagnosis

Misdiagnosis involves a failure to diagnose – since the correct diagnosis was not made – but it also involves potential treatment for a condition you do not have.  If test results are mixed up or improperly read, doctors might tell you that you have a condition you do not have, and they might begin treating you for it.  Giving unnecessary treatments is not only a waste of money, but it could also put your health in danger.  This is especially true when it comes to potentially dangerous treatments like chemotherapy.

Keep in mind that misdiagnosis can even occur when the patient is, in fact, healthy and has nothing wrong with them.  In these cases, all of the treatment is unnecessary.  However, misdiagnosis can also occur when someone is sick, leaving their true condition untreated.

Surgical Errors

This is perhaps the category of medical malpractice that most people think of first.  Surgical mistakes can include pure mistakes, such as a doctor slipping with a scalpel and nicking a blood vessel or nerve.  Even these potentially minor mistakes could result in a need to repair the damage, and patients could be left with long-term problems as a result.

In many cases, patients are even told that the effects they face after a botched operation are “normal,” and that pain and discomfort are to be expected after surgery.  Because you were unconscious and unable to testify as to what happened during the procedure, you might not be able to identify what happened, and it may take a second opinion from another doctor to discover the cause of the injury.

Many doctors seek to hide or cover up these mistakes, and it may be difficult for your Belleville medical malpractice lawyers to get the evidence they need.  We can subpoena records and testimony to uncover what happened and who was responsible.

Items Left Inside

Items left inside a patient during surgery usually result from surgical errors, but these cases are often treated a bit differently.  Doctors and nurses are required to count things like tools and sponges so they can account for all of them at the end of a surgical procedure.  If any are missing, it is likely they are inside the patient, and they should be monitored and removed.  If they fail to discover their error and treat the patient, doctors and nurses could be liable for issues down the road, such as infection, sepsis, and the cost of further surgeries to remove the items.

In these cases, there is less technical evidence required because anyone, even people without medical training, can tell that an error was made if they left surgical tools or sponges inside the patient’s body.

Gross Negligence

“Gross” negligence refers to egregious negligence where serious mistakes in judgment would have been necessary for the resulting mistakes to occur.  In medical malpractice cases, this usually refers to terrible, tragic mistakes like performing the wrong surgery, performing surgery on the wrong patient, or even amputating the wrong limb.  These mistakes are rare, but victims are left with serious injuries and complications when these mistakes do happen.  These doctors and health care providers should be held responsible for these issues.

Hospital Acquired Infections

Some infections are unavoidable, but hospitals and their staff should take steps to avoid infections for patients.  Especially after surgery, dressings are changed frequently, prophylactic antibiotics are administered, and patients are bathed and kept clean to prevent infection.  In some cases where infection happens anyway, the hospital could be held liable.  Hospitals are especially liable for infections if they were caused by unsterilized tools, dirty operating rooms, or other unclean facilities.

Call Our Belleville Medical Malpractice Injury Attorneys Today

For help getting compensation for a medical mistake, call the Belleville medical malpractice attorneys at The Carrion Law Firm today.  Our phone number is (718) 841-0083.