The 5 Biggest Medical Errors That Lead to Medical Malpractice Cases
Medical malpractice occurs when a physician fails to provide the proper standard of care to a patient, resulting in injury or death. Medical malpractice often causes unnecessary complications or health issues for the victim due to negligence or poor practice by a physician. If you are a patient who’s been a victim of medical malpractice, you may be entitled to receive financial compensation. If that’s the case, it’s extremely critical to seek legal advice from an experienced malpractice lawyer.
The Top 5 Biggest Medical Malpractice Mistakes
Medical errors can happen in various ways, but below are the most common reasons for medical mistakes:
1. Wrong Records/Incorrect Patient
While it seems like common sense to check a patient’s chart, accidentally reading the wrong records is a mistake that happens far too often. And sometimes, it can lead to grievous medical errors, such as operating on the wrong body part or performing an unnecessary treatment.
2. Misdiagnosis
According to CBS News, close to 12 million people are incorrectly diagnosed annually. This means those patients receive either a false diagnosis or experience a failure to diagnose their actual problem. A misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose a medical condition can lead to valuable lost time to correctly address the problem and can also lead to injury or death.
3. Surgical Errors
Surgical errors and mistakes are usually caused in part due to poor planning before surgery. However, they can also result from a doctor operating under the influence of alcohol or drugs. These errors can have horrible consequences, including surgical complications, injury, infection, or death. Types of surgical errors include:
- Performing the wrong operation
- Operating on the incorrect body part
- Leaving a foreign object inside of the body
- Performing surgery on the wrong patient
- Placing an incision on the wrong area
- Prescribing the wrong medication or medication dosage post-surgery
- Failing to explain post-op procedures
4. Birth Injuries
Brain injuries, paralysis, bone fractures, and cerebral palsy can all occur as a result of medical malpractice during birth. Other similar injuries during labor and delivery include the incorrect usage of vacuum or forceps, not performing a C-section when necessary, failure to notice an umbilical cord wrapped around the neck, and a failure to respond to a decline in the fetus’s vital signs. Other medical errors can occur during the prenatal stages when pregnancy-related conditions and congenital disabilities are improperly diagnosed.
5. Anesthesia Errors
Anesthesia is nothing to take lightly, and the implications of an anesthesiologist making mistakes can be a matter of life or death. Common medical malpractice errors in anesthesiology include:
- Administering too much or too little anesthesia
- Failure to account for any pre-existing health conditions in the patient
- Improper placement of the breathing tube
- Defective or faulty medical equipment
- Not paying attention to the patient’s vital signs
- Wrong pre-op instructions before the procedure
Conclusion
Being a victim of medical malpractice can have life-altering and devastating consequences. However, you are entitled to compensation for the damages you’ve suffered. A personal injury attorney can gather the evidence necessary for your claim while helping you receive the right amount of money you are owed for the suffering, pain, medical bills, and lost wages you’ve experienced.
