When patients suffer harm due to the negligence of healthcare providers, the consequences can be devastating for not just them, but their families as well. In these cases, it’s crucial to seek the guidance of an experienced medical negligence attorney in Kansas City to help navigate the complexities of negligence claims.
This guide is dedicated to defining medical negligence and how it can directly affect a victim’s life.
What is Medical Negligence?
When physicians or other health care providers harm patients through negligence, this is considered medical malpractice, a term used interchangeably with the term medical negligence. In order to prove medical negligence, several key elements must be established:
- Duty owed to the patient: the obligation that a healthcare provider meet the standard of care in treating a patient
- Breach of duty owed the patient: the failure of the healthcare provider to meet the standard of care
- Causation: a link between the healthcare provider’s failure to meet the standard of care and the harm caused to the patient
- Damages: the harms caused to the injured party
Types of Medical Negligence
Medical negligence – sometimes referred to as medical errors – cause an estimated 200,000 deaths each year. Some common examples of medical negligence include:
- Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis
- Failure to timely or appropriately treat a condition
- Surgical errors
- Medication errors
- Birth injuries
- Failure to obtain informed consent
Misdiagnosis or Delayed Diagnosis
Diagnosing a patient is a complex process that includes using clinical reasoning and information to determine a patient’s specific health problem and guide the appropriate medical response.
An incorrect or late diagnosis may result in unnecessary treatment or a patient not receiving timely treatment at all. In these situations, a medical negligence attorney in Kansas City can help evaluate whether legal action is appropriate. A misdiagnosis can occur when a healthcare provider fails to:
- Refer a patient to a specialist
- Order the proper medical testing or seek out additional information
- Reconcile clinical signs and symptoms of an illness
Additionally, other types of errors can affect the identification of an illness, including:
- Errors when conducting a medical test or evaluating data
- Mislabeled lab or test results
- Lost test results
Failure to Treat
A failure to treat violates the standard of care that a healthcare professional accepts when taking on patients. This negligence is a frequent cause of malpractice claims. Some common examples of failure to treat include:
- Prematurely releasing a patient from the hospital
- Failing to order the appropriate medical tests
- Failing to provide instruction on follow-up care
- Neglecting to consider a patient’s previous medical history when prescribing medicine or treatments
A medical negligence attorney in Kansas City is essential in investigating potential failure-to-treat cases. Their role includes examining the circumstances, identifying the responsible parties, and determining the precise medical errors that resulted in harm.
Surgical Errors
Whether it is an emergency surgery or an elective procedure, there are many healthcare professionals in an operating room with a patient who all have a duty to prevent harm. This holds true for outpatient procedures, like a biopsy, as well.
Some common mistakes that can occur during surgery that may be considered a surgical error include:
- Failure to follow accepted medical practices before, during, or after surgery
- Problems with anesthesia
- Tools, gauze, or other medical devices left inside a patient
- Performing a surgery or procedure on the wrong patient
- Performing a surgery or procedure on the wrong part of the body
During surgery or other medical procedures, physicians, nurses, and healthcare staff are required to clearly and accurately communicate critical patient information to prevent serious mistakes.
When a breakdown in communication leads to harmful errors, a medical negligence attorney in Kansas City can help pursue accountability and develop tailored legal strategies to protect a victim’s rights.
Birth Injuries
Injuries that occur before, during, or after childbirth can have catastrophic results. These injuries can be caused by a variety of errors, including:
- Failure to perform a C-section when necessary
- Failure to recognize fetal distress
- Improper use of forceps or using excessive force to remove a baby from the birth canal
- Substandard prenatal care
These errors can result in specific birth injuries, which include shoulder dystocia, a brachial plexus injury, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, and cephalohematoma.
Medication and Prescription Errors
Medication and prescription errors represent a significant area of medical negligence, with the potential to cause serious harm to patients. These errors can arise from a variety of circumstances, ranging from incorrect drug prescriptions to improper dosage administration.
In certain instances, these mistakes may form the basis of a medical malpractice claim, particularly when they result in injury or exacerbate an existing medical condition. A medical negligence attorney in Kansas City is recommended to help determine if a case constitutes as negligence.
Common examples of medication and prescription errors include:
- Prescribing the incorrect medication: Administering a medication that is not intended for a patient and their condition can lead to adverse reactions, trigger allergic complications, or even worsen existing health conditions. Errors in drug selection can stem from misdiagnosis, failure to review a patient’s medical history, or overlooking known allergies or contraindications.
- Interactions with other medications: Physicians and pharmacists have a duty to consider all medications a patient is currently taking. Failing to consider a patient’s existing medications can lead to poor interactions with other prescribed drugs, resulting in dangerous side effects.
- Inaccurate dosage: Administering too much or too little of a medication can be potentially harmful. An insufficient dosage can fail to improve a patient’s condition, while an excessive dosage can result in toxicity, organ damage, or other serious medical consequences.
Failing to carry out the order: Sometimes the correct medication and dosage are ordered, but the system in administering the medication to the patient breaks down.
The consequences of a prescription error can potentially be severe and widespread. Patients affected by these errors may experience extended illness, additional medical complications, or, in the most severe cases, permanent injury or death.
Because of the complex and technical nature of these claims, individuals who suspect they have been harmed by a medication or prescription error should consult with an experienced medical negligence attorney in Kansas City.
Failure to Monitor or Follow Up
Failure to monitor or follow up represents a serious form of medical negligence, occurring when a healthcare provider fails to appropriately observe, assess, or respond to a patient’s condition. This can occur in a doctor’s office, during surgery or childbirth, or while receiving care from a nurse.
Several factors may contribute to a failure to monitor or follow up, including understaffed facilities, inadequately trained personnel, communication breakdowns, or lapses in clinical judgment. No matter the cause, healthcare providers have a duty to uphold a standard of care by consistently observing and responding to patient needs.
- Failure to monitor in a doctor’s office: Patients attending a medical appointment have a reasonable expectation that their healthcare provider will thoroughly review their chart, medical history, and ongoing health concerns.
- Failure to monitor during or after surgery: During a surgical procedure, patients must be properly monitored to ensure they have steady blood pressure and a stable heartbeat, and are responding appropriately to medications. After a procedure, patients need to be monitored to avoid potentially life-threatening post-op complications.
- Failure to monitor during childbirth: Labor and delivery demand careful, continuous monitoring to ensure the health and safety of both mother and child. This includes tracking maternal vital signs, timing contractions, assessing cervical dilation, and continuously monitoring the baby’s heart rate and response to the stress of labor.
If you or a loved one has suffered as a result of a failure to monitor or follow up, it is critical to understand your legal rights. A knowledgeable medical negligence attorney in Kansas City can help determine whether a case meets the criteria needed to qualify as medical malpractice.
How Medical Negligence Affects Patients
Medical negligence can affect a patient’s quality of life and have huge, negative affects on their financial and physical health. Outside of visible physical injuries, victims of negligence often experience considerable pain and suffering, along with mental anguish, and emotional turmoil.
Some of the common consequences of medical negligence include:
Physical and Psychological Consequences
Physical injuries sustained from medical negligence are the most obvious consequence. These physical injuries can include, for example, brain injuries, quadriplegia, loss of the use of one or more limbs, damage to vital organs, or a combination of many of the conditions.
These injuries in turn can cause physical disability, which can cause a loss of enjoyment of other aspects of your life.
Along with this, victims may need considerable care and treatment, potentially including, successive procedures to address the conditions caused by their injuries and damages. This places the patient in additional and unnecessary physical pain and subjects them to additional recovery time and risk.
In addition, victims of medical negligence may be caused severe physical pain, as well as mental and emotional suffering. Oftentimes, the permanent physical, psychological, and/or emotional consequences can have the most detrimental effect on a victim’s life.
Financial Consequences
Furthermore, often for victims, there is a loss of income after medical negligence, as they cannot work after the incident.
Victims of medical negligence may be caused to incur considerable financial burdens. For example, their injuries may require them to undergo significant medical treatment and unplanned for expensive medical bills.
In sum, the concurrent and future financial burdens imposed on the victim’s and victim’s families can add incredible stress to an already strained situation.
Holding Negligent Providers Accountable: Speak with a Medical Negligence Attorney
In Kansas City, victims of medical negligence have a trusted ally in Bartimus Frickleton Robertson Rader. With over four decades of handling complex medical malpractice cases, our team is committed to holding negligent healthcare providers accountable and securing justice for those harmed.
If you or a loved one have suffered due to medical negligence, take the first steps towards justice and call our office at (913) 266-2300 to speak with a member of our team.
The above is not intended to be legal advice. Each individual case is different and must be analyzed on its own set of facts and circumstances. If you believe you may have a case, it is critically important that you timely contact a lawyer to ensure your rights are protected.
