When you are a patient in a health care facility, you can tell whether or not you have received sub-standard services. Still, anyone that hopes to win a medical malpractice claim must define the features found at an acceptable health care facility. So, how can a lawyer and client agree on such a definition?
The client-lawyer team needs to study the level of services available at other similar facilities. Each of those facilities should have on staff physicians with the same level of training as the doctors at the facility, used by the injured client.
The next action involves making a list.
Together with an injury lawyer in Mississauga, the former patient, the person that has filed a medical malpractice claim should compile a list of the mistakes that marred his or her visit to the unsatisfactory hospital, testing center or clinic. It could be that the same claimant also saw errors made by other patients’ physicians.
Instances of medical malpractice that might be on a compiled list:
• A physician ignores a recommendation and decides against ordering a specific test, feeling that the results from the completed tests should suffice.
• A doctor makes an improper diagnosis and deprives a patient of access to an effective treatment.
• A doctor does not take the time to make a careful study of a patient’s medical history.
• A surgeon cuts into the wrong spot on a patient’s body.
• A physician fails to obtain a patient’s informed consent before carrying out a given procedure.
The nature of the consequences, following commission of any of the above-listed mistakes:
In each instance mentioned above, the patient’s condition got worse, as a result of the mistake made by some healthcare worker. The existence of that one features highlights the patient’s right to file a medical malpractice claim against an action committed by a doctor or some healthcare provider cannot become grounds for a medical malpractice lawsuit unless it causes a worsening of the patient’s condition.
Still, the mere evidence of that worsening condition does not represent sufficient proof of a medical malpractice claim. The harm done to the patient needs to get linked directly to the mistake made by a doctor or another healthcare provider. If that linkage exists, and if the resulting consequences foretell a tale of harm to the affected patient, then the claimant stands a chance for winning his or her case. Yet every claimant should understand that there always remains one distinct possibility. The sued doctor might claim that the unhappy former patient acted in a manner that helped to bring-on the medical problems that were then plaguing that same former patient. In that case, the unhappy patient would find it hard to win the filed, medical malpractice claim.
