Medical malpractice is often characterized as an instance in which treatment from a medical professionals falls below the accepted standards of care or violates a patient’s rights. Many people may be victims of medical malpractice and not even realize that their injuries and suffering was a result of a doctor’s malpractice.
The following elements can indicate medical malpractice:
- A duty was owed to the patient
- That duty was not upheld
- The practice deviated from the medical standard
- These actions led to an injury to the patient.
In most cases, victims or the family of a victim of medical malpractice have up to three years from the date of their injury to file a claim (One year from the discovery of the injury). It may be difficult to tie your injury back to one specific date or incident. An attorney can help you understand the intricacies of a medical malpractice claim and can help you understand the specific nature of your case.
Our medical malpractice lawyers and Medical experts can represent claims in California such as:
Hospital & Doctor Negligence: Inadequate staffing of nurses, LPNs and medical staff can result in poor screening of patients coupled with unqualified staff providing care, Misreading or misinterpreting X-ray results, Medication errors from misreading prescriptions, dispensing the wrong medicine, providing the incorrect dosage or ignoring allergic reactions
Surgical Errors: Surgical errors can happen regardless of how complex an operation is or where the surgical site is. The operating room can present many risks to patients, including sharp instruments, potential for infection, and many other factors. It is critical that surgeons and staff exercise great care and precision before, during, and after the operation.
Birth & Children’s Surgical Injuries: Childbirth is a delicate procedure that must be handled with great care by doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. A newborn can suffer from life-changing injuries at any time – before, during or following childbirth. Children who undergo surgical procedures can also suffer from catastrophic injuries if a surgeon is negligent or careless during the operation.
Anesthesia Errors: Anesthesia is what physicians use to control pain during a surgery or procedure using a medicine called anesthetics. It can help control breathing, blood pressure, blood flow, and heart rate. Anesthesia can be used to relax patients, block pain, make the patient sleepy or forgetful, or make you sleep before surgery. However, the dosage needed for each patient will vary. Anesthesiology is a precise science requiring doctors to take the patient’s medical history into account. When they make an error, the results can be disastrous.
Nursing Malpractice: Similar to malpractice cases involving doctors, nursing malpractice occurs when a nurse fails to completely perform his or her medical duties that a normally competent nurse in the same situation would—and that failure harms the patient.
Examples of Medical Malpractice: Medical negligence, or medical malpractice, can take many forms. Depending on which medical professional caused the injury, medical negligence claims can be brought against hospitals, hospital staff, doctors, nurses, or other healthcare professionals. However, when someone suffers an injury in a hospital or after a medical procedure, they might not know what kind of claim to file. The following are some common examples of medical malpractice.
Procedures Gone Wrong: Some cases of medical negligence are blatant errors, including amputating the wrong limb or performing a treatment on the wrong patient. However, not all medical procedures that go wrong will be the basis of a claim. Only when a doctor fails to exercise reasonable care will a person be able to sue for damages.
Prescription Errors: This type of error can result in fatal or significant consequences. Whether it happens because a doctor fails to write down the correct dosage or type of medication or because whoever reads the prescription fills the wrong medicines, these kinds of mistakes could result in an allergic reaction or worse. For example, if a patient needs a type of drug to recover from an illness, but they are prescribed the wrong medication, the delay in receiving the correct treatment could worsen the condition to an extreme degree.
Misdiagnosis: Sometimes physicians will fail to diagnose a problem another doctor in similar circumstances would have caught. If this happens, a person could sue for damages. However, if it’s an accident any reasonable, good doctor would make, you may not have a good case.
Post-Surgical Infections: All hospitals and doctors do their best to minimize the potential for infection after surgery. However, post-surgical infections are incredibly real and scary problems. Unfortunately, the source of an infection is difficult to prove, meaning even when these infections happen to admitted patients, negligence is not automatic.
Lack of Informed Consent / Medical Battery: Patients have a right to be fully informed of the consequences of a medical procedure in addition to the consequences of choosing to forgo it. If a doctor or staff member lies to a patient to secure their consent to perform a technique or surgery, this error can be both medical malpractice as well as medical battery. Informed consent means doctors have accurately explained procedures, medications, and associated risks that are more likely to occur. If the treatment resulted in an injury that was statistically so small your doctor didn’t mention it, he or she might not be on the line for negligence. Likewise, if a doctor suspects a person might be too emotionally fragile to handle the potential side effects of a life-saving treatment, he or she might leave out details. In cases such as these, it becomes harder to prove negligence.
How Long Do I Have to File a Medical Malpractice Claim?
Since medical malpractice injuries are not always discovered right away, the statute of limitations to file a medical malpractice claim works differently than other personal injury claims. According to California Code of Civil Procedure section 340.5, you have three years from the date you were injured or one year from the date you discovered your injury to file a claim. If an injury victim is considered a minor younger than six years old. Even if more than three years have passed since the injury, the medical malpractice lawsuit may be filed as long as it’s before the child’s eighth birthday.
Finally, it’s important to take note of one more procedural hoop that California medical malpractice plaintiffs must jump through: California Code of Civil Procedure section 364 entitles the defendant healthcare provider to at least 90 days’ notice of a patient’s intent to file a medical malpractice lawsuit. If the plaintiff provides that notice within 90 days before statute of limitations runs out, the deadline will be extended for 90 days from when the notice was served on the defendant.