Medical malpractice claims occur when a medical care provider fails to fulfill a professional standard of care. There are many different kinds of medical failures, all of which can cause severe harm to innocent patients who trusted their doctor to help them.
No matter the type of medical malpractice you or a loved one was victimized by, the Tampa medical malpractice attorneys at Diaco Law are here to help. Dr. Dan Diaco is one of just a few attorneys in the country who have a medical degree as well as a law degree. This has given Dr. Diaco an in-depth understanding of how to build strong cases. Our firm has also spent 35+ years fighting for malpractice victims.
Our team will help you fight for justice in these complex cases, so give us a call to speak with a Florida medical malpractice lawyer as soon as possible. You can also read on to learn about the common types of medical malpractice cases and how they can affect you.
1. Misdiagnosis or Delayed Diagnosis
A misdiagnosis happens when you are diagnosed with the wrong medical condition. In some cases, this can have very serious consequences.
For example, if your doctor misdiagnoses your lung cancer as bronchitis, your heart attack as indigestion, or your colon cancer as irritable bowel syndrome, lifesaving treatment could be delayed, and your condition could become difficult or impossible to treat.
Delayed diagnosis is similar and it occurs when your diagnosis takes longer than is reasonable. This often happens because of a communication failure, such as your lab work coming back to your doctor showing a problem but the doctor not reviewing it or communicating with you.
Misdiagnosis and delayed diagnosis claims can be very complicated because doctors often try to argue that your underlying condition caused the damage and not their failure to diagnose it properly.
You’ll need to prove that the doctor fell short in their obligations, that no reasonable physician would have made the same error, and that you suffered harm because of their failures.
2. Surgical Errors
Surgical errors happen when surgeons make mistakes. Surgeons are specially trained and go through many extra years of residency so they are held to a high standard of care and expected to behave with the same degree of competence and skill as a professional with similar training and credentials.
Surgical errors can sometimes be very obvious, such as when:
- A surgeon operates on the wrong patient or the wrong body part
- A surgeon leaves an instrument inside you.
These are called “never events” because they should never happen. When certain “never events” are the issue, such as leaving a foreign object in a patient, this creates a presumption of negligence, making it easier to prove your case.
Other surgical errors are more technical and require you to prove that a surgeon’s botched procedure fell below the standard of care and caused you harm.
3. Medication mistakes
Medication mistakes can happen when you are:
- Administered the wrong dose of a medication
- Administered the wrong type of medication
- Administered medication in the wrong form
- Prescribed a drug that adversely interacts with your other medication
You can often take legal action against the doctor who prescribed the drugs, those who administered the drugs, or a pharmacist who made an error and gave you the wrong drug or did not notice the drug interaction risks.
4. Anesthesia mistakes
Anesthesiologists are also among the most highly trained medical professionals and have had many years of specialized training, so are held to a very high professional standard.
If an anesthesiologist made a mistake that no similarly trained anesthesiologist would have, then they may be held legally liable.
Common anesthesia errors include:
- Administering the wrong dose of a medication
- Administering the wrong medication
- Making a mistake when intubating you
- Ignoring your medical history when deciding what anesthesia to use during your procedure
- Equipment malfunctions
You will need to prove these anesthesia mistakes occurred.
5. Birth injuries
Birth injuries are a common and devastating type of medical malpractice and one that often results in significant damages because a child can suffer lifelong injuries or lose their life.
When a child needs ongoing care, the medical providers who made the mistake should be the ones to pay for the medical services required as well as for other losses.
Some of the most common reasons for birth injury include
- Allowing labor to continue for too long
- Failing to monitor the mother or baby’s condition
- Not identifying signs of fetal distress
- Inadequate prenatal care
- Failure to order an emergency C-section
- Botched C-sections
- Improper use of vacuum extractors or forceps
In these and other situations, a child could experience deprivation of oxygen to the brain, brachial plexus injuries, and a variety of other complications that result in lifelong medical impairment.
6. Failure to obtain informed consent
Finally, failure to obtain informed consent is another example of medical malpractice.
This occurs when a care provider treats a patient without fulfilling the requirement to inform them of the treatment options, ensure that they understand the risks and benefits, and make a conscious, fully informed decision about whether to proceed.
In these cases, technical questions arise about whether the doctor took the proper steps to inform the patient as well as whether the harm occurred as a direct result of the doctor’s failures.
Contact a Florida medical malpractice lawyer today
No matter how a doctor harmed you, taking legal action can be complicated. You need to identify defendants, find the right experts to testify about how the standard of care was breached, and prove your damages.
In many cases, you’ll take action against multiple defendants, including the doctor and their employer, and malpractice insurers often fight hard to avoid paying the damages they deserve.
Diaco Law can begin building your case from day one, bringing in-depth medical knowledge, decades of experience, and a strong network of medical experts to the table.
Just give us a call today to schedule your free consultation with a Florida medical malpractice lawyer to learn more about the services we offer.