Not every medical mistake constitutes medical malpractice. If you’ve been harmed by a doctor or nurse’s error, you may be wondering if it counts as malpractice.
The answer to this question depends on the specific circumstances of your injury.
Medical malpractice causes more than a quarter-million deaths each year.
According to Johns Hopkins Hospital, it is the third leading cause of death in the United States. OB/GYNs and neurosurgeons are the most likely to be sued for malpractice.
Examples of Medical Malpractice
The following scenarios are all theoretical examples of medical malpractice. They are not actual cases, but they could be, and it could happen to any one of us.
- An adolescent girl has rods and screws surgically implanted in her spine to treat scoliosis. When her extremities went numb, the doctor delayed removing the rods and screws for more than a week, resulting in the girl becoming a quadriplegic.
- A woman in the second stage of labor is ready to push, but the nurses hold her legs shut to delay the baby’s delivery until the obstetrician arrives. As a result, the baby is deprived of oxygen, leading to brain damage and severe cerebral palsy.
- A man is rushed to the hospital emergency room with a serious headache. The physician who treats him missed the symptoms of a stroke and instead give the man pain medicine to treat the headache and send him home. The result is brain damage and permanent disability.
- A premature baby is given a medication overdose, leading to immense suffering and, eventually, the infant’s death. The parents are left grieving, with a mountain of medical bills, and scrambling to cover expenses for a funeral that should never have happened.
All of the above scenarios would qualify as medical malpractice.
The medical professionals involved in any of these hypothetical scenarios failed to act in the same way that another competent professional would have in the same situations.
4 Common Causes of Malpractice
The following are four common reasons for medical malpractice lawsuits.
Surgical Errors
Roughly half of all surgeons have been sued at least twice for medical malpractice due to surgical errors. Surgical mistakes can include:
- Leaving instruments or sponges in the patient’s body
- Operating on the wrong body part
- Puncturing an organ
- Failure to give adequate postoperative instructions
Birth Errors
Many different conditions can cause injury to a fetus immediately before, during, and after birth.
These can include oxygen deprivation, using too much force with medical instruments, the failure to diagnose or treat a complication, or the mismanagement of labor.
Anesthesia
Many people worry about the risk of anesthesia more than they worry about the surgical procedure itself, and with good reason.
Anesthesia mistakes can be deadly, and every year hundreds of people go under anesthesia for simple procedures and never wake up again.
There have also been cases where anesthesia didn’t work, leaving the patient able to feel everything.
Misdiagnosis or Delayed Diagnosis
Missed and delayed diagnoses are the most common reason for medical malpractice claims for incidents that took place outside of a hospital setting.
Misdiagnosing a patient or taking too long to diagnose a condition can cause them to miss out on opportunities for treatment. In the worst cases, this will lead to the patient’s death.
About Malpractice Lawsuits
In general, if you can prove that a medical mistake breached the duty of care, that this caused your injury, and that the injury led to your damages, you’ve got a valid malpractice case.
Malpractice cases are relatively uncommon when compared to other types of personal injury cases. In fact, they make up just 5% of cases.
If you or a loved one have been injured by a medical professional’s mistake, you may want to consider reaching out to a medical malpractice law firm to determine whether or not you have a valid case and how much your case may be worth.