Thursday, January 14, 2016

What are some of the Essential Elements of Medical Malpractice?

The term medical malpractice signifies improper treatment by a doctor or hospital neglect that results in injury, damage, or harm. It doesn’t imply any intent or plan to do any harm, but merely a medical error that hurts someone and slows or prevents the healing process and Gastonia, NC medical malpractice lawyers such as J. Boyce Garland are well studied up on this law.

Standard of Care

In some states the improper medical treatment is termed a violation of “prevailing professional standard of care.” Statutes define this standard as level of skill, treatment, and care, which in view of every pertinent surrounding circumstance, is acknowledged as appropriate and acceptable by similar health care providers who are reasonably prudent. Medical malpractice is applicable to all kinds of physicians, specialists, nurses, and hospitals.


 Basic Elements of Medical Malpractice

All medical malpractice cases consist of various factors that must prevail in order to create a basis for any malpractice claim and hospital neglect. Some of the basic elements are breach, duty, causation, as well as damages. Only then will a Central or Charlotte area North Carolina medical malpractice attorney establish each one in order to be successful in a lawsuit. There is not a better legal professional in this area of law and area of the country than J. Boyce Garland as well.

What is Duty?

Duty denotes that a doctor owes a patient a duty to perform appropriately and reasonably, and that he/she is responsible for making available some kind of treatment for the patient.  This requirement is met when there is a doctor-patient relationship. Duty means the duty to perform within the confines of the “standard of care”, meaning appropriate and reasonable care.

What is Breach?

When a physician breaches his/her duty towards the patient, it is a deviation from this standard of care. The doctor is responsible for offering reasonable care as well as treatment to a patient, and the breach denotes that he/she failed in his duty. The same applies in the case of hospital neglect where the hospital can be held liable for breach of duty or in the case of nursing home abuse.

What is Causation?

Causation implies that the physician’s breach of the standard of care either contributed to or caused some harm or injury to his/her patient or death. 

What are Damages?

Damages signify that a person sustained harm due to a doctor’s mistake. However, if a doctor made a medical error and it did not cause any harm to his/her patient, no claim for damages can be made. For the most part, damages are classified as economic, non-economic, and punitive damages.

Apart from these basic elements, there are a few other factors that can also be considered medical malpractice which will involve the filing of the necessary paperwork by Gastonia, NC medical malpractice lawyers and J. Boyce Garland will know exactly on how to go about doing this.

Errors in Diagnosis

Errors in diagnosis implies failure of the timely diagnosis of conditions such as heart disease and/or cancer and the failure to diagnose what is known as developing conditions. There are times when patients visit their physician with clear signs and symptoms of any disease process, and the physician is unable to consider these comprehensively in order to arrive at a diagnosis. This is when doctors get into trouble since how were these symptoms missed? 

Medication Errors

Medication errors are most common dosage errors and the really critical of these are decimal point errors. If a pharmacy or nurse reads “1.0” as “10”, the patient will get 10 times the prescribed dose which can be lethal. A lot of injuries and deaths in hospitals today are caused by medications errors.

If you or a loved one is a victim of hospital neglect or a doctor’s negligence, the first step is to meet a Central or Gastonia, North Carolina medical malpractice lawyer to evaluate your case and the potential compensation you may or most likely deserve. You can do so by calling up J. Boyce Garland (http://jboyceattorney.com/) who is a dedicated legal professional and know this part of the law. You pay him nothing up front and he keeps you informed along the way. He only takes a percentage of the final settlement. So really, he is not paid until you are paid!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Popular Posts