Can You Sue a Doctor for Medical Malpractice?
Medical malpractice is a serious issue, and often, leads to various long-blown lawsuits. However, what actually is this type of legal action? This is when a medical healthcare professional deviates from their profession causing injury or harm to a patient. This can occur in many forms, including a misdiagnosis, giving the wrong treatment to a patient, or other forms of aftercare (more on this shortly).
So, as you would likely expect, you can sue a doctor for medical malpractice. This blog post will discuss more on the subject matter, including who can be sued and the various different types of malpractice.
Yes, a doctor can be sued for medical malpractice
As previously discussed above, a doctor can be sued for medical malpractice. Also, if other healthcare professionals caused harm, such as a nurse, lab technician, or other specialists, then they too can also be sued for malpractice.
For a malpractice claim to be valid, the medical misdiagnosis or form of malpractice must lead to harm to the patient. For example, this could include using too harsh a treatment when not required (e.g. chemotherapy) when alternative, better treatment options should have been used. Other examples of harm may include unnecessary surgery which results in bodily damage or scarring or generally, decreasing the well-being of their client, or worse, increasing their risk of death.
What are the different types?
There are many different types of medical malpractice, including:
- Misdiagnosis
- Surgical negligence
- Long-term negligent treatment
- Poor misinformed advice
- Errors with prescriptions (e.g. giving too much or too little of a drug, causing harm to the patient)
- Using too little or too much anesthesia (waking up during surgery causing either physical or mental harm and distress)
If your situation falls into any of the above forms of malpractice, then you likely have a case. Similarly, if you are a doctor or healthcare professional, you should consider purchasing medical malpractice insurance if you haven’t already. While some things may not be your fault and accidents do happen, it’s important to protect yourself in the event of a lawsuit.