While thousands of successful surgeries occur each day, undergoing surgery always carries some risks. In some cases, the risk is justified by the potential benefits of the surgery. In other cases, errors may occur that leave the patients in a worse condition that they were prior to the surgery. If you or a loved one were injured due to a surgical error, you should consider calling a Kingston surgical error lawyer to get the legal advice you may need.
Whether it is due to a lack of time, fatigue, lack of communication among staff members, or simple inattentiveness, surgical errors can cause irreparable harm to patients. When this situation occurs, a determined medical malpractice attorney could help you recover compensation for your losses from any negligent doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers.
What Are Common Types of Surgical Errors in Albany?
While there are many different types of errors that can and do occur in a medical setting, some surgical errors are more commonplace than others. These may include:
- Leaving foreign objects inside patients following surgery
- Failing to repair organs as needed
- Injuring otherwise healthy organs
- Operating on an incorrect limb or organ
Any of these situations can leave patients with severe injuries that might cause permanent damage, could necessitate further medical intervention, and may also lead to substantial pain. Individuals who suffer injuries at the hands of their own surgeons may be entitled to compensation for their losses. A Kingston surgical error attorney could be instrumental in helping patients maintain claims for medical malpractice.
Proving Surgical Error Claims
Careless behavior while performing surgery often leads to errors, and it is these errors that result in injuries to patients. Surgical error claims are most commonly based on a theory of negligence, which in the context of medical malpractice entails failing to act according to the standards of a reasonable medical provider in the same or a similar situation.
What Makes a Doctor Negligent?
Doctors have a duty to their patients to live up to professional standards of care. When they breach this duty, they may be liable for any injuries that they cause, and their patients may be able to seek compensation with the help of an experienced legal advocate. Consulting a surgical error lawyer in Kingston as quickly as possible may be crucial to maintaining a medical malpractice claim in this situation.
Kingston Surgical Errors and the Statute of Limitations
State law establishes timeframes during which injured patients are required to file medical malpractice claims. Under New York Civil Practice Law & Rules §214-A, patients who have suffered injuries due to the negligence of surgeons and/or hospital staff have two years and six months in which to file their claims for compensation. Failure to file these claims within this time limit could leave a plaintiff unable to seek any damages for injuries that they have suffered, no matter the circumstances that led to their injuries or the extent of their ensuing damages.
It should be noted, though, that there are some exceptions to this general statute of limitations. More specifically, if the surgical error malpractice claim is based upon the discovery of a foreign object inside the body of patients, then those patients have one year from the date that they discovered or reasonably should have discovered the presence of the foreign object in their bodies in which to file suit, whichever is earlier.
Set Up a Consultation with a Kingston Surgical Error Attorney
When you undergo surgery, you expect to end up with an improved quality of life or a resolution to the medical problem the surgery is meant to address. In some cases, though, surgeons or other hospital staff make errors and may cause further injuries or complications to occur. If you or a loved one were injured by surgical errors, you may want to look to a Kingston surgical error lawyer for advice.
The additional pain, costs, and trauma of additional surgeries or treatment, as well as any permanent impairment that may occur, could be devastating. If you find yourself in this type of situation, legal representation may be the most effective way to redress the wrongs that you have suffered. Call today to schedule an initial meeting and see what your options for recovery may be.