As a patient, you trust medical practitioners to help you get better. And most physicians do their best to achieve so. However, errors may occur. According to the National Practitioner Data Bank, Georgia received 175 medical malpractice payment reports by September 30th, 2022.
You may experience medical malpractice in different specialties of the healthcare industry. The following are four common ones:
1. Diagnosis
Failure to diagnose and misdiagnoses are among the leading reasons for medical malpractice claims. If a doctor fails to diagnose you or mistakes your signs for another disease, your condition may worsen. Some patients have even reported doctors diagnosing chronic conditions as benign. Diagnostic errors can lead to avoidable surgeries, disabilities or the death of a loved one.
2. Treatment
A doctor can give you the right diagnosis but fail to treat you as required. For instance, they can discharge you soon, overprescribe medicines, or give you inadequate care. These can lead to excessive pain, worsening of a disease, high medical bills and suffering.
3. Delivery
Preventable birth injuries can harm your child significantly. They can lead to brain damage and developmental disabilities.
Some of the errors that occur in the labor room are delayed delivery, failing to spot problems, inappropriate pulling of the baby, failing to perform necessary cesarean section, incorrect use of instruments, oxygen deprivation, use of wrong medication and improper management of complicated pregnancies.
4. Surgery
This is one of the crucial departments in the healthcare field, yet it also experiences errors. Examples of medical malpractice in surgery include operating the wrong area, performing surgery when it’s not needed, injuring adjacent organs due to negligent actions, anesthesia errors, forgetting medical equipment in a patient’s body, and substandard aftercare.
You should learn how to identify medical malpractice to respond sooner. It will help to get legal help to make the right moves.
