Medical Malpractice: An Overview
By: Jorjina | Posted: 17th March 2011
Medical malpractice has become one of the most common legal issues in Johnson City. Every now and then people are becoming the victim of medical malpractice. This is the reason that medical malpractice law has become stringent to stop such unwanted occurrence. But it is very unfortunate to find people who don’t have a clear idea about medical malpractice.
People just run to file a lawsuit against a doctor or a health care institute if a disease is not diagnosed properly. If you have experienced a similar situation and going to file a lawsuit, think twice. You need to understand that a lawsuit can not be filed against a doctor just because the doctor has failed to diagnose a disease.
A doctor can be held liable for a patient’s health condition only if the doctor’s failure to treat the patient has resulted in further damage. Otherwise your lawsuit will not be granted to be valid.
In Johnson City, the law requires the plaintiff to establish two elements if the plaintiff wishes to file a lawsuit against a medical institute or a doctor or even a health care professional.
The two elements a plaintiff needs to establish are:
The doctor or health care professional has completely failed to diagnose the disease of patient.
The doctor’s failure to treat the medical condition has damaged the medical condition of the patient.
If the idea is still not clear to you, let’s go through an example. This example will help you to get rid of your misconception.
Example: Suppose you have hurt your knees and went to the doctor for treatment. The doctor tells you that the issue is nothing serious and you will recover within a few days. So the doctor sends you home after bandaging your knee. After waiting for a couple of days you feel that you are not at all recovering. So you go for a second opinion and the doctor asks you to do an X-Ray which reveals a hair line fracture. Now the hair line fracture is not a result of the first doctor’s failure to treat you properly. The fracture was there right from the beginning but the first doctor has failed to diagnose it. In such case you can not take legal action against the first doctor. But if the doctor’s failure to treat your knees would have caused you further damage (like amputating your leg) you could have file a lawsuit against the doctor.
If you have decided to file a lawsuit against a doctor make sure you seek help from Johnson City Medical Malpractice Attorneys who can deal the case better than you and maximize your chance of wining the case.
Please visit lawyer guide for more information.
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Tags: misconception, failure, few days, occurrence, second opinion, couple of days, x ray, plaintiff, health condition, knees, medical condition, two elements