Medical malpractice is an extremely serious topic that can have several negative ramifications on your life. If you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice, then you need to get in contact with a medical malpractice lawyer immediately. However, medical malpractice can be tricky to identify and may be hard to prove. Due to this, it’s extremely important that you understand how medical malpractice works when working with medical professionals. So what are the most common types of medical malpractice that you should look out for? Let’s take a look.
Misdiagnosis
One of the most common types of medical malpractice is the misdiagnosis of a patient. When a patient goes to the doctor, they expect to receive an accurate diagnosis of their problems and to receive the right treatment in turn.
However, when a doctor provides a diagnosis that is wrong or misleading, things can go awry. With a wrong diagnosis, the wrong treatment may be prescribed. As a result, you won’t get the right treatment needed to solve your medical problem, letting your medical issue fester and potentially get worse.
In addition, the misdiagnosis could cause you to take medicine with negative side effects, side effects that you have to suffer through even though the drug isn’t solving your problems. Misdiagnosis can lead to some serious health problems, and if a doctor seriously misdiagnoses a patient, they might have a malpractice suit coming their way.
Entering Wrong Data
Another common type of medical malpractice is entering the wrong data into a patient’s chart. Entering the wrong data can have some serious consequences, as it may lead to the wrong medicine being prescribed or even other potentially life-threatening events.
For example, if you’re allergic to Penicillin and your doctor fails to enter that data into your chart, then you may be prescribed a drug in the penicillin family down the line. Depending on how serious your allergy is, this can be a major concern.
Always double-check to make sure your medical chart is up-to-date and has all your information on it. Additionally, if wrong data in your chart causes you pain and suffering, then you may want to look into opening up a malpractice case.
Errors During Surgery
One of the more serious types of medical malpractice are errors that occur during a surgical operation. Surgery is a very complex task, and as a result, many things can go wrong.
An unprepared, poorly educated, or unfocused doctor could end up making mistakes such as performing the wrong operation, operating on the wrong body part, or failing to follow sanitary protocols. Errors during surgery can be extremely devastating and life-threatening, sometimes resulting in nerve damage, major loss of blood, or serious infection.
All of these can be life-altering to a patient, and if you’re someone who has to suffer through something like this, you definitely should look into opening a malpractice case.
Prescribing Wrong Medication
When you visit a doctor, you’ll want to be prescribed medication to help cure your ailment and get you back on your feet. However, if a doctor makes an error when prescribing you your medication, it can have some grave consequences.
For example, prescribing the wrong medication can cause your ailment to go untreated, resulting in serious damage. In addition, the negative side effects of the wrongly prescribed medicine could also lower your quality of life. However, prescription errors aren’t just limited to prescribing the wrong medication, as it also covers prescribing the wrong dosage or failing to recognize harmful drug interactions.
Prescribing too high of a dose for a drug can result in heightened negative side effects, while prescribing too little of a drug may have no effect at all on your ailment.
Finally, some drugs have harmful interactions and can cause major damage when taken together. If a doctor fails to notice these harmful interactions and still prescribes you a drug, they could be liable for damages.