Causes of Medical Malpractice in El Dorado
It’s important to note that medical malpractice is not you simply being unsatisfied with your care. If you received medical care that failed to satisfy you but didn’t cause harm, you did not experience medical malpractice. However, if a doctor was negligent, made a mistake, and you suffered injuries and other damages, you likely have a valid medical malpractice claim. Your doctor has a duty of care that they owe you. When they violate the duty of care and injure you, that’s when they’ve committed medical malpractice. There are specific instances of mistakes that healthcare workers can make that commonly lead to patients suffering from injuries. In El Dorado, Arkansas, and all around the country, these are the medical mistakes that we most see as causes of medical malpractice:
Misdiagnosis
If a doctor looks at your symptoms and diagnoses you with the wrong disease or ailment and starts treating you for that wrong diagnosis, then that could cause more harm to your body. For example, if your doctor diagnoses you with cancer but you don’t have cancer, the surgeries and treatments that you endure for that diagnosis could seriously damage your health.
Missed Diagnosis
Your doctor could miss an important diagnosis that delays your treatment and creates more health problems. For example, if you are having a heart attack and miss that diagnosis, you could suffer from even more serious side effects from not getting immediate treatment for your heart attack.
Medication Error
Sometimes, a healthcare professional makes a mistake regarding medication. This can give you an allergic or adverse reaction or cause more damage to your body. If they give you the wrong dose, the wrong medication, or administer it the wrong way, then you could have experienced medical malpractice from a medication error.
Anesthesia Error
A specific medication that can be very harmful when not given in the correct doses is anesthesia. There are specific medical professionals in charge of administering anesthesia for you during a procedure. If they give you too much or too little, then you could suffer from physical or emotional trauma.
Surgical Error
Surgeons can make mistakes in many different steps of the surgery process. Whether they operate on the wrong spot, slip up and make a cut that’s too deep and injures another body part, or leave instruments inside the body after the surgery is over, then they should be held accountable for their actions.
Poor Documentation
If a nurse, doctor, or another healthcare worker does not take particular, detailed notes and document your treatment, then those errors could lead to a mistake in your care. Something as simple as a day’s missing chart could lead to you being injured in one way or another.
All of these mistakes can cause serious injuries to patients. When you leave a hospital in worse shape than when you entered, something is wrong. You shouldn’t have to deal with this on your own. One of our El Dorado medical malpractice attorneys can guide you through the claims process to get justice for what you’ve been through.
