We Trust Our Doctors, But Even Doctors Can Make Mistakes
What is medical negligence?
As patients, we trust our doctors to provide a certain standard of care to treat us for routine illnesses, to provide preventative care, and help us during a serious medical illness or emergency situation. When that standard is not met, and a patient suffers harm as a result, then the doctor may be guilty of negligence or malpractice.
Medical negligence occurs when a medical professional acts in a negligent manner when treating a patient’s condition. Medical malpractice can be the result of incorrect actions taken by a doctor or a doctor’s failure to take medically appropriate action.
A patient who has been injured by a doctor’s negligence has rights to compensation and proper treatment.
Examples of Medical Negligence
Doctors rely on their training, but sometimes are required to make judgment calls as to how to treat an individual patient. However, if that judgment strays from a generally recognized standard of care and causes harm to the patient, the doctor’s error may not just be a poor judgment call, but could be medical negligence.
Some instances of medical negligence include:
- Failure To Diagnose. Failure to diagnose a condition or misdiagnosis of a condition such as cancer, stroke, or heart attack. A delay in a diagnosis also delays proper treatment and can result in serious harm to the patient.
- Wrong Treatment Given. Failure to provide appropriate treatment for a condition or providing the wrong treatment (for example: providing the wrong type of physical therapy, the wrong chemotherapy, the wrong type of blood transfusion, or the wrong antibiotics and coverings for post-surgical wounds).
- Wrong Medication. Providing the wrong medication or incorrect dose of medication that lead to harm, overdose, or death of a patient. This includes prescribing a medication that in itself is not dangerous, but that can cause serious side effects in patients with known allergies or a medical history of adverse reactions.
- Failure To Treat a Medical Condition. Failure to treat or diagnosed a medical condition in a timely manner. This type of failure may result in life-altering complications such as the loss of site, a limb, organ, or even result in a wrongful death.
- Lack of Informed Consent. Failure to get informed consent from the patient prior to a medical procedure that results in harm to the patient (if a doctor does not tell a patient that a surgical procedure has a 50 percent chance of paralyzing the patient for life. If the patient has the operation and becomes paralyzed as a result, the doctor can be held liable, even if the operation was performed correctly, because the patient might have refused the surgery if the risks were made known).
- Anesthesia Errors. Failure to correctly administer anesthesia, to foresee interactions between anesthesia and other drugs in the patients system, or administering anesthesia to a patient who is allergic to the medicine.
How much does it cost to retain an attorney for a medical malpractice case?
If you retain our law firm, as a client of Donahue & Horrow you will pay nothing until there is a recovery on your case. Medical malpractice cases are expensive to litigate and can cost over $100,000 just to take to trial. The firm pays for all costs and the client only pays us back if there is a recovery. If there is no recovery, then the firm does not ask that the clients repay the costs advanced.
Experienced Los Angeles Medical Malpractice Attorneys
Donahue & Horrow LLP, assumes this risk and therefore, we only those cases which are truly meritorious. Contact our offices in El Segundo, California, today to learn more in an informative consultation, free of charge.