A former patient that has chosen to charge his or her doctor with medical malpractice faces a real challenge. The target of such a charge must be guilty of more than simply failing to prescribe a treatment that can act as a sure cure for a given patient’s ills.
In order for a claimant to win a medical malpractice suit, that former patient’s care had to qualify as substandard care.
The standard is set by a recognized group of medical professionals. Here are some examples of substandard care:
-Failing to detect the presence of a harmful condition, or failing to test for the presence of a medical problem.
-Failing to alert a patient to the recognized risks, regarding a given treatment.
-Making mistakes like these while performing an operation:
1) Aiding formation of an infection
2) Operating on wrong side, or on wrong body part
3) Leaving something in the patient’s body
4) Performing an operation while on drugs, or while intoxicated
Questions to ask before charging a doctor with malpractice
• Did the doctor deliver a standard level of care? If not, then what was the nature of the doctor’s deviation from that standard?
• What was the extent of that deviation? Understand that doctors are not expected to be perfect in every respect.
A medical institution like a hospital might also be guilty of malpractice.
Hospitals have the right to establish and follow their own guidelines, when receiving a request from a physician that would like to be affiliated with a particular hospital.
By the same token, an injury lawyer in Richmond Hill knows that nursing home or a rehabilitation center could also be charged with violating established medical standards. Such institutions are supposed to enforce those practices that help to keep patients from developing an infection, developing food poisoning, or developing another harmful condition, such as bedsores.
Someone that has spent time in a hospital might develop diarrhea or constipation. The same patient could not initiate a lawsuit against the same hospital. The standards for care have not been perfected to the point where no patient that has been properly cared for should suffer with diarrhea or constipation.
Not every unwanted outcome result from malpractice.
• Not all patients have the same reaction to a particular drug.
• A physician has no obligation to try a new treatment, if it has not become a standard treatment.
• A patient has the right to refuse to take a given test, although a doctor might try to reduce the patient’s concerns.
Not every test manages to limit the amount of pain that the tested patient must endure. Fortunately, medicine puts lots of effort into finding newer and less painful ways for testing patients.