Knowing The Common Types Of Medical Malpractice Claims Can Help You Protect Your Rights

When we think of medical malpractice, we may think about a doctor’s hand slipping in surgery, or a surgeon failing to do a surgery properly and the patient ends up with a bad result and continued problems after the procedure. In fact, when we think about medical malpractice we generally think about surgery error. However, there are many different types of medical malpractice which can be just as bad but perhaps not as obvious.

The following are some of the more common types of New York medical malpractice cases that you may be entitled to compensation for:

Medication Errors

Either prescribing a patient the wrong medication, a medication that the patient is allergic to, or a series of medications which interact with each other in a bad way can be medical malpractice. This also includes when a healthcare provider prescribes a medication not appropriate for a certain type of patient, such as a powerful drug for a minor or elderly patient. Or an anticoagulant (blood thinner) to a pre or post surgery patient. These can be medical malpractice.

Wrong Site Surgery

While it sounds like a horror story from the movies, wrong site surgery is unfortunately too common and a real problem. This type of medical malpractice should never happen, yet it does. This is where a patient is going to get surgery on his or her left knee for an injury, but the surgeon performs the procedure on the right knee. This means creates a new injury to an unharmed knee, and requires the patient to undergo another surgery to fix the injured knee. This is much more dangerous and impactful when the surgeon is supposed to remove a damaged or diseased organ, such as a kidney, and removes the wrong one—the healthy one—and leaves in the bad one! Another example is where a surgeon operates on a spinal disc at L4-L5, but the injured disc is actually L3-L4—a disc away!

Wrong Patient Surgery

Another fear every patient about to undergo surgery, this is where the procedure for one patient is performed on another surgery by mistake. This is not a thing of fiction, and does actually happen! An example would be where patients get mixed up, and one patient gets a knee replacement when he is supposed to have carpel tunnel surgery, and the other patient gets carpel tunnel surgery when she needs knee surgery. Both patients need to undergo another surgery, and both will have to undergo recovery for a completely unnecessary procedure.

Missed Diagnosis or Delayed Diagnosis

Any missed or delayed diagnosis can be medical malpractice where a reasonable prudent physician in the same speciality would have made the proper diagnosis but the defendant-physician failed to do so. This is particularly devastating when the patient has cancer or another serious disease which could have been treated, but the diagnosis was missed and the cancer grows to a point where it is no longer treatable. This is an obvious case of medical malpractice.

But what do you think? I would love to hear from you! Leave a comment or I also welcome your phone call on my toll-free cell at 1-866-889-6882 or you can drop me an e-mail at jfisher@fishermalpracticelaw.com. You are always welcome to request my FREE book, The Seven Deadly Mistakes of Malpractice Victims, at the home page of my website at www.protectingpatientrights.com.