Although we don’t hear about them very often, medical malpractice cases involving pregnant women are quite common. In case you or someone in your family has had a birth-related malpractice situation on their hands, you need a reputable accidents attorney’s help and a lot of additional info on who you can sue and how damages can be obtained.

What is a birth related medical malpractice case?

This is typically a malpractice situation when staff in a hospital or medical facility acts in a negligent manner. What does negligent manner mean? Well, typically that they failed to use reasonable care, which resulted in injury to both the mother and child, wrongful birth, wrongful pregnancy or other life threatening conditions.

There are different rules related to each of the above, and the damages correspond to the severity of the situation.

Birth injury to the child or the mother

This may typically occur during the birth process or prior to it, and may result in injuries to the mother, the infant or even both. Some of the very difficult medical cases involved here include negligently failing to control blood loss post delivery on the mother, failing to control oxygen intake for the baby or the mother, pre or post delivery.

Typically, if the baby is injured post delivery, the parents, as the legal guardians, are the ones who must bring the lawsuit. There are both general and special damages involved with such trials. These may include the cost of suffering (physical and or mental)).

There are more serious cases, where a doctor or medical staff will erroneously decide to deliver an infant prematurely, resulting in brain damage. More damages can be paid on such cases, including rehabilitation, developmental needs and medical expenses recovery.

In case of injury to the mother during or after child birth, she is the one who legally has the right to sue. Several malpractice issues with the mother can occur during birth, prior or even after. One typical case could be the fact that the doctor did not observe the mother’s high blood pressure, a condition known as preeclampsia, and the mother has a seizure during.

What happens in wrongful birth cases?

Typically, parents claim that the doctor should have warned them about their child’s impending birth defects and that if they had known, they would have either avoided the pregnancy or ended the pregnancy.

You should know that birth related cases of malpractice are pretty complex and can entail a lot of legal and medical issues. This means you should never rely on your own knowledge and represent yourself. Do your best to contact a specialized accidents and personal injury attorney who will be able to represent your interest best.

Some of the most difficult cases for a specialized accident attorney are medical malpractice lawsuits. This is generally because they are hard to prove and very sensitive as far as medical responsibility. Many medical malpractice suits are the direct result of a misdiagnosis or a delayed diagnosis of an illness or injury. An error in diagnosis will generally lead to incorrect or delayed treatment plans leading to the worsening of a patient’s condition, sometimes even leading to death.

But, is a mistake in diagnosis enough to support a medical malpractice suit? Below are a few things to consider.

Legally, not all medical doctors are in all situations responsible for an error in diagnostic. So, if you are looking to win a medical malpractice case against a doctor, you need to provide proof of the following:

–          There was a medic- patient relationship in place

–          The doctor treated you in a negligent manner (they did not provide treatment in a timely and competent way).

–          The medical negligence brought about a worsening of your condition or even an injury.

An in-depth look at the negligence malpractice possible cases

–          An expert will have to be hired by your accidents attorney to assess the differential diagnosis that was given to you and overall determine if the medical doctor used reasonable care in your case. Evaluation is very important and admissible in court, provided the expert has a track record of such assessments and reputation as a medical professional.

–          The key in diagnostic error cases is to prove that another doctor, of the same expertize and under similar circumstances would not have either misdiagnosed or mistreated you.

Let us have a further look at various errors that may appear in a diagnostic test

–          A medical doctor may misdiagnose a patient because of wrong or inaccurate results coming from the lab. This may be because the equipment was faulty or some form of human error has occurred, the tests were lost, contaminated or mixed up, the procedure the lab technician used was incorrect or the specialist missed something in interpreting tests. In general, the medical doctor might not be made liable for malpractice when this occurs, but you do have a case against a lab technician.

–          A medical doctor has completely missed the diagnostic. This is a rare situation where a doctor can give the patient a clean bill of health, but the patient turns out to be sick

–          A wrong diagnosis can sometimes be given, when the doctor is unable to identify the right affliction the patient suffers of.

–          A delayed diagnosis is another form of misdiagnosis and this normally occurs when the doctor actually recognizes the right condition but after a significant testing period.

–          Another form of misdiagnosis is when a medical expert is unable to identify an unrelated disease, maybe a secondary affliction that causes additional symptoms and can worsen the patient’ situation.

The most important thing when it comes to a medical misdiagnosis is to be able to prove the medical expert was at fault. For this, you can benefit from the help of a specialized accidents attorney, with a proven track record of won cases in court.

Many people become victims of medical malpractice without actually realizing they have a case they could win in court. Accident attorneys as well as statistics will show you, however, that most medical malpractice cases occur in emergency situations. But before you jump to any conclusions and run directly to court to sue a medical practitioner, take some time to consider a few special circumstances.

1)      Special rules apply in emergency room situations

The first thing you need to know is that, in most US states, first responders to an incident, auto accident or dramatic incident, are protected from lawsuits. No such rules apply to medical personnel in emergency rooms, however. Yet, expectations to avoid mistakes are lowered, when a situation is qualified as emergency, and this is mainly due to the fact that the medical team has to act fast and take important decisions in a matter of minutes.

To return to the legal protection that first responders get, we should define who these professional categories are: emergency medical teams on an ambulance, firefighters and other responding technicians.

There are however situations where first responders can be liable: if they do something that is blatantly negligent or even intentional, they can be sued for malpractice. The result, in most cases is these people can be made financially and legally responsible for damages.

2) ER personnel can be liable for a medical malpractice charge

In the case of a patient who has been injured by a medical practitioner, doctor or nurse, in an emergency situation, if there is proof of reckless behavior. As in most malpractice cases, however, the patient has to prove that the effect of the negligence could have been avoided and, other medical doctors or nurses couldn’t have done the same mistake. The key in all this is “under the same circumstances,” in other words you have to prove that different medical practitioners would have acted differently to your medical situation. In this case, as your specialized accidents attorney will tell you, an expert will have to testify for that in court.

3) Hospitals can be sued for medical malpractice

The medical unit can usually be considered liable if emergency room staff have committed a medical malpractice mistake. There are however some situations where a medical doctor is not the actual employee of that hospital, and in that case, the medical institution is not liable. This however applies only in non-emergency situations. In an emergency room situation, though, this is no longer a valuable argument because the patient did not choose a specific doctor to go to, they went to the ER for specialized treatment. As a result, hospitals are usually on the hook if a medical malpractice is being built, following an ER case.