Getting a surgery performed is already scary enough as it is, add on a medical malpractice mistake during the surgery you have a nightmare on your hands. Unfortunately, medical malpractice during a surgery happens more often then one would think. In the event medical malpractice happened during a surgery you had, contact a medical malpractice attorney immediately. Before we dive into discussing malpractice during a surgery, we need to first identify what exactly medical malpractice is.
What is Medical Malpractice?
Now I am sure we have all had an experience with a healthcare professional that we did not enjoy or possibly a treatment that did not work. But these situations are not indicative of neglect or malpractice on the healthcare workers side. The law defines medical malpractice as an event that led a patient to be injured due to the failure of the healthcare worker to practice medicine that is acceptable by professional standards that are expected.
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All healthcare providers in the United States are legally held to these responsibilities and can be sued for medical malpractice if or when they violate it. It is also defined as an act of negligence, or failure to maintain the accepted professional standards of care or practice. This can be violated by healthcare workers and professionals such as doctors, nurses, surgeons, pharmacists, dentists, technicians, the hospital themselves or even nursing homes and their employees. I know we are discussing surgeries today, but it would still not hurt to identify some of the more common medical malpractice injuries, these are:
- Birth injuries – these can happen during, after or even before the process of the birth takes place.
- Ineffective or delayed treatments – nurses and doctors alike are trained to identify potential symptoms of serious injury; they must act quickly to ensure it does not worsen.
- Misdiagnosis – a misdiagnosis can lead to medical tests and treatment being performed that are not necessary, and not cheap.
- Prescription drug errors – these can happen anywhere in the distribution chain of the drug.
- And lastly, surgical errors – thousands of these surgical mistakes and errors happen in the United States every year.
Now that we have discussed what medical malpractice is and the most common forms of it, let us discuss how medical professionals make mistakes and why surgical errors happen. Some common surgical errors are:
- Wrong site surgery – this is when the surgery is performed on the incorrect part of the body, it could be the wrong eye or maybe limb.
- Incorrect surgical procedure – this is done when the wrong part of the body is removed such as organs.
- Wrong patient surgery – the name says it all, a procedure that was supposed to be performed on one patient, was accidently performed on the wrong patient.
- Items left in the body after the surgery such as sponges or towels for example.
- Infection and or contamination from the healthcare workers using unsanitary equipment,
- Damage to one’s nerves due to a surgeon error or anesthesiologist error.
- Medication errors like administering the wrong dosage of a medication or the incorrect medication.
- Illness caused by unsanitary equipment that was used during the surgery.
- Lastly, failure to advise the patient who had surgery on how they should behave when recovering.
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As you can see, there are many ways a medical malpractice mistake can be made during a surgery. If you believe this happened to you, contact a medical malpractice attorney today so they can get you the compensation you deserve. Now let us discuss why these trained healthcare professionals make these costly mistakes. The most common reasons are:
- Communication errors – when one is being treated for an injury or any type of illness seldom is it just one healthcare professional looking at the information. It could be two doctors that are seeing a patient at different times, or hospital staff making a decision on a treatment without the correct or proper information on the patient. Or they did not communicate with the patient themselves regarding pre-existing conditions, allergies, etc. If a healthcare professional is making decisions without the right information many times, they will make a crucial mistake when it comes to their diagnosis or treatment. This can lead to many medical mistakes.
- Keeping accurate records – this somewhat ties in to the above, if a healthcare office does not have the proper information on file, it can lead to a costly mistake in the treatment of the patient.
- Sometimes it can be the procedures set in place by the healthcare facility, not having equipment properly sanitized or processes in place to ensure patient safety.
- A hospital may be short staffed, which means doctors and nurses are rushing to get to the next patient and might overlook critical details.
There are many other reasons why a medical professional would make a mistake, these as mentioned before are just the most common. In the event this happened to you, contact a medical malpractice lawyer as soon as you can. They will review your case and seek out the facts to prove it was indeed negligence that caused your injury. If it is found that negligence did occur and you were injured during a surgery, a medical malpractice lawyer will fight to get you the compensation you deserve.
