When you visit a doctor about symptoms you are having, you reasonably anticipate that you will have an answer as to what is going on and a proper treatment plan will be given to you. So what happens when a doctor makes a mistake that causes a patient’s health to worsen? This is referred to as medical malpractice, which is a serious problem that takes the lives of hundreds of thousands of people every year across the nation. If you are worried that something isn’t right with your medical care, then now is the time to get help from another doctor and a reputable lawyer.
Failure To Diagnose
One of the most prevalent ways that medical malpractice happens is when an illness goes undiagnosed. A patient may go to the doctor, but the doctor misses the early signs of illness or doesn’t take the patient’s concerns seriously. Making this mistake can lead to worsened condition, complications, or fatalities. This is especially true for diseases of an aggressive nature that exacerbate quickly, where treatment may have been effective if a prompt diagnosis was concluded earlier.
Delayed or Misdiagnosis
Another common medical malpractice occurrence is a delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis, which is a late or incorrect health determination. A doctor may attribute symptoms to the wrong illness, which leads to treatments and medications that adversely affect the patient, not make them better. Misdiagnosis can result in serious health complications, so help must be sought right away. Many people seek a second opinion from another doctor, and if the first doctor’s conclusion was much different from the second, then medical malpractice could be the culprit.
Wrong Medication Type or Dosage
Medical issues can arise if a doctor prescribed you the wrong medication or an improper dosage. It is possible that a doctor failed to notice a possible interaction with the patient’s current medication and the newly prescribed one. As a medical malpractice lawyer from Disparti Law Group explains, it is the duty of the medical professional to check and confirm that a drug they are providing a patient will treat their condition and not affect their health for the worse. The wrong medication that causes health issues for the patient is often a clear indication of medical malpractice.
Lack of Informed Consent
Treatments and medical procedures come with certain risks, which is why before providing any treatment, the doctor has to fully explain the benefits versus the risks involved. In this way, the patient can make an informed choice about whether they want to receive this treatment or not. A patient must have enough information at hand to make a decision that is right for them. Without it, they may make a choice that ultimately affects their health in a negative way. For lack of informed consent to be deemed medical malpractice, the patient will have to prove that they were not informed of the risks properly, and that if the doctor explained the risks entirely they would have declined treatment.