Did you know that medical negligence can lead to a lawsuit? Well, a careless act caused by a medical practitioner or a healthcare professional can cause harm to a patient leading to the medical practitioner being sued. Medical negligence is the inadequate care that is provided to a patient by the healthcare professional, which can cause an existing condition to worsen or can cause an injury to occur.

There are a lot of ways that medical negligence can occur such as misdiagnosing an illness, treating a patient wrongly or making surgical mistakes. Making a medical negligence claim has been said to be a very tedious process and in case you need some help, Scot Accident Claims are always available to help. They will make the process as easy as possible for you to sue the medical practitioner and get compensation for your injuries.

In order for a practice to be defined as malpractice, the following elements must be found.

DIRECT CAUSE

Here, the patient must be able to prove that the healthcare professional actions directly caused an accident to happen to them. In a lot of cases identifying medical negligence can be a very easy task, for instance, if a doctor decides to perform a surgical procedure on the patient without their consent or them signing off to agree, that is medical negligence and a patient can sue the doctors for such an act. Identifying medical negligence can also be a very complex task in cases where the doctors fail to take into consideration the patient’s past medical history since the doctors can claim they took everything into consideration.

DUTY OF CARE

Medical practitioners have the responsibility of taking care of their patients on a daily basis, they are required to provide quality care to their patients to avoid any injury from occurring. This requires the doctors to maintain very high standards while treating their patients, diagnosing a disease, keeping the patient’s medical information as private as possible, informing the patients in case of any risks that may be encountered while performing a surgical procedure and also in making sure that a mistake must not be performed in any surgical procedure. Failure to this the patients can sue the doctors due to the lack of care.

Doctors must also be in a position to refer their patients to an expert in case a surgical procedure is to be performed, this is clear evidence that there is a responsibility in taking care of their patients.

DAMAGES

Medical negligence also involves damages whenever it occurs, therefore, patients must be able to identify and demonstrate the damages that were caused by the doctors by the doctor’s actions. If the healthcare professionals’ lack of care does not cause any harm to the patient, then the patient can not sue them and does not qualify to be medical negligence. The courts will identify the damages caused as either physical damage, emotional damage or economical damage. Economic damages are very easy to quantify in case of compensation while the physical and emotional damages are hard to quantify since pain and suffering can not be measured 

DANGER

In cases where the medical practitioners fail to meet their expected relationship between them and the patients, that always leads to an unsafe environment for the patients. Doctors must provide a safe environment for their patients while they are at the hospital and a clean environment as they have agreed to fulfil their promise. 

If the doctors fail to fulfil their agreement in maintaining a safe and clean environment, the patients may develop some infections and complications as a result of the unclean environment. The patient can hence sue the doctors as a result of a breach of their agreement to keep them safe from the environment. The medical practitioners must also perform an authorized procedure and thereafter provide the right medication to their patient’s failure to this the patient must sue the doctors.

CONCLUSION

Having a doctor you can trust and feel comfortable with is heaven-sent, this reduces the cases of medical negligence that may occur. Most patients do not realize they have an opportunity to fight for their rights in case any of the elements above occur, this is why it is recommended to always have a home doctor.

Medical practitioners’ liability has been of great concern to healthcare providers and that is why great measures are taken to those doctors that cause medical negligence.