If you have been injured by a doctor or healthcare professional’s negligence, you may have grounds for a medical practice case. How do you know when your case is considered malpractice rather than an unfortunate accident that your doctor will likely not be held accountable for?

It can be hard to know when to file a medical malpractice lawsuit, but the first thing to do is to call a lawyer with medical malpractice experience. Here at the Law Offices of Gary Bruce, we are dedicated to helping clients from the local community receive justice and compensation for their injuries. Call us at 706-596-1446 to schedule your complimentary consultation.

Medical Malpractice Conditions

For a medical malpractice case to be brought, the following conditions must be met:

  • The person or institution you are suing had a duty of care towards you that they breached
  • Due to this breach of duty, you suffered significant injury

Doctors, hospitals, nurses, caregivers at a nursing home, and all other healthcare professionals and institutions have a duty of care towards their patients. This means that they must provide a reasonably competent and professional level of care. If you suffer an injury because of incompetence or neglect, you may have a medical malpractice case.

As an example, a doctor may be found liable for your injuries if they prescribed you medications known to interact in a harmful manner. The doctor should have known that there would be a harmful reaction, so he can be held liable.

However, a doctor may not necessarily be found liable if there was no reasonable way to know that those medications would react negatively. Accidents do sometimes happen, and if there was no way that your doctor could have known about or prevented your injury from occurring, they will most likely not be found liable.

Types of Medical Malpractice Cases

Medical malpractice covers a wide range of healthcare related injuries. These can include:

  • Surgical error
  • Medication error
  • Failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis
  • Nursing home neglect
  • Infection due to a hospital stay
  • Birth injuries due to neglect or error during labor and delivery

Diagnostic errors are the most common type of medical malpractice claim. Physicians can easily make mistakes when diagnosing a patient, especially if they are overworked or don’t communicate properly with nurses, technicians, pharmacists, or even the patients themselves.

Errors in diagnosis often occur when:

  • Doctors are not thorough enough when taking the patient’s medical and family history
  • Doctors do not take the patient’s symptoms seriously
  • The wrong type of lab test is ordered
  • Lab test results are misinterpreted
  • Lab tests are improperly performed

The most serious type of diagnostic error, and the one that leads to the most medical malpractice claims, is when doctors fail to diagnose cancer in a reasonable time frame. When caught early, many cancers can be easily beaten. However, if caught too late, a cancer that would otherwise have been survivable may end up being fatal.

If you lost a loved one to cancer or another disease due to delayed diagnosis or misdiagnosis, you may have a wrongful death claim. Contact us for a free case evaluation.

Schedule Your Medical Malpractice Consultation

If you or a loved one has suffered severe injury or death due to medical malpractice, don’t hesitate to contact “the good guys” at the Law Offices of Gary Bruce by calling 706-786-4517 today. Consultations are free, and we will be happy to review your case to see if you have grounds for a lawsuit.

We serve clients in Columbus and Ft Moore (formerly Ft Benning), GA as well as Phenix City, AL.