Tuesday, December 1, 2015

What are the basic elements of a medical malpractice lawsuit?

Filing a lawsuit for medical negligence or hospital neglect can be extremely complicated as far as personal injury law is concerned, which is why medical malpractice lawyers are so heavily valued. This is because medical malpractice remains a unique type of personal injury case that is brought against doctors, hospitals, nurses, EMTs, or other health care professionals.

It is a type of professional malpractice that is applicable only when a person becomes injured during any sort of medical treatment or care. Any person who suffers from a medical malpractice injury can hold the medical care provider/s liable for that injury, as per the special rules meant for this kind of professional negligence. If your issues stem from the pathetic care or sloppy medical management from a nurse, press right here.

What are the legal requirements?

A person, who was injured due to the negligence of any medical care provider, can hold the provider accountable if that victim can establish the four indispensable factors, of a medical malpractice claim. The four factors in question are…
  1. The medical care provider has a duty to the patient.
  2. This duty was breached.
  3. The breach of this duty was the immediate cause of a harm, and without this breach, the harm would not have happened.
  4. The harm was the direct cause of an injury, and so the patient should be compensated.
Proof of the Legal Elements

From the halls walked by medical malpractice attorneys, unless these four interconnected elements are present, a plaintiff cannot file a medical malpractice or hospital neglect claim. Besides, the onus is on the victim to establish his/her case. This signifies that a victim should prove that the medical care professional, whether a doctor or otherwise, was liable. For the most part, a doctor need not prove that he was not. Therefore, anyone who is faced with a similar situation ought to seek the services of a medical malpractice attorney as soon as possible.


 The Duty of Care

This is an easy thing to prove. There are always records of a patient consulting a doctor in his/her private clinic or a hospital. This can be in the form of prescriptions for drugs, recommendations for laboratory tests, and hospital admission records, to name a few.

Breach of Duty

Once the duty is proved, then the plaintiff must establish that the doctor or any other medical care professional violated that duty. The common varieties breach is as follows:

Misdiagnosis/Failure to Diagnose

If a doctor is unable to diagnose a medical condition that he/she could have reasonably diagnosed, from the symptoms that the patient reported and/or after the recommended tests are performed, then the doctor is liable for misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose. There are various kinds of misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose, which is why it is prudent to consult a lawyer for a thorough understanding of your case.

Causation

This final step is the most difficult thing to prove for any plaintiff. Basically, the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff who has to establish that the direct or proximate cause of some type of damage or injury. The doctor or hospital can come out with many seemingly plausible causes for the harm or damage, in a way that seems real. 

Under the circumstances, the plaintiff must gather as much proof as he/she can. This can include medical records that document the suspected cause of the injury. Finally, the victim ought to hire a prolific and steady medical malpractice lawyer who can employ expert witnesses to testify that the plaintiff’s injuries were directly caused by an act of medical malpractice or hospital neglect.

You may want revenge and you may want to scream and shout in the hospital or even when you get home but this is the wrong attitude. Your legal revenge needs to be methodical. This is why you need legal help and this is where https://usattorneys.com/ enters the picture. You can find the legal help you need on that site. 

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