The practice of medicine is hard, and many things can go wrong. Sometimes, even when a medical provider does everything in his or her power to help the patient, they will make a mistake that results in injury or death. In these cases, those affected by the mistake may be able to file a medical malpractice claim against the healthcare provider.
You should get legal advice from an experienced lawyer if you have a case for medical malpractice. Several different claims can be asserted against a medical professional, and the details of each of those claims may depend on what exactly happened during treatment.
Let us now see into the most common medical malpractice claims.
- Misdiagnosis
Perhaps one of the most common medical malpractice claims is a claim of misdiagnosis. These claims usually arise when an individual believes that the medical provider has not looked closely enough at their symptoms. Sometimes, the error of diagnosis can be relatively minor and may cause no real damage to the patient. In other situations, however, a misdiagnosis may cause serious injury or even death in the patient.
- Delayed diagnosis
Another very common medical malpractice claim is a claim of delayed diagnosis. In these cases, the error is not one of misdiagnosis, but rather an excessive delay in exploring the condition of the patient. Perhaps the time between when signs or symptoms arose and when they were properly diagnosed accurately was too long, or there was no diagnosis whatsoever.
- Failure to treat
In these cases, the patient believes that they were not given the proper treatment or that they were not treated in a manner appropriate to their condition. Instead of using the right treatment, it is alleged that the provider has used an alternative regime of treatments that have been ineffective.
- Prescription drug errors
Prescription drugs are among the most commonly used medications in the country, and most of them are nothing to worry about. However, prescription drugs do occasionally cause injuries and deaths, and this is one of the most common medical malpractice claims.
- Surgical or procedural errors
This type of mistake can be related to a procedure performed on the patient or can even result from the wrong procedure used. A surgery-related claim may allege that there was an error in the course of surgery, such as an improper incision on the patient.
- Childbirth injuries
In this type of claim, the child or the mother may have been injured during childbirth. The injuries may include bleeding, birth trauma, or infections.
