What You Need to Know Before Filing a Medical Malpractice Suit

If you feel you’ve been the victim of medical malpractice, you may wonder how to go about hiring a lawyer and whether you actually have a case. Proving medical malpractice isn’t easy, and there are many factors involved. This makes legal guidance necessary.

There are four key criteria to consider when filing a medical malpractice suit. While it may seem like a clear-cut case to you if you or a loved one is the alleged victim, a third-party lawyer should review the evidence to advise you before you move forward with the lawsuit.

An Established Relationship

The first thing a lawyer must prove is that you had an established doctor-patient relationship at the time of the incident in question. Most of the time, this goes unchallenged, but for example if you took a referral from a doctor outside of the scope of an official appointment, the individual’s status as a medical doctor alone does not give you grounds to file a malpractice suit.

Was Duty Breached?

The key in medical malpractice is whether the standard of care was breached during the case in question. Without an attorney, you would be spinning your wheels trying to determine this on your own. This a slippery slope to navigate, especially since the standard of care varies from state-to-state. What you may consider inadequate treatment may be considered standard practice by the state.

Is There A True Cause?

Proving a medical malpractice case comes down to connecting a breach of duty to a misdiagnosis, injury, or other adverse reaction to a procedure or treatment. This is the most complex aspect of a case and will most likely cost you the most money. Beyond connecting the dots, a lawyer must present witnesses to testify that your doctor’s negligence caused your problem.

Certain cases are cut-and-dry. If a doctor amputates the wrong limb, proving negligence would be easy. If a patient undergoing brain surgery dies in the operating room, proving that negligence led to death instead of the brain injury itself is much more difficult.

Did Damages Occur?

Tangible damages must have occurred in order for you to have a solid argument for malpractice. You may find you have tangible damages, but they aren’t substantial enough to spend the time and money on a malpractice case. A lawyer will navigate through these things with you to determine if you accrued additional medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering, emotional distress, wrongful death, or punitive damages, and whether your compensation would be worth the fight.

Whether your case is ruled malpractice or not, you will still deal with emotional, physical, and mental turmoil from the process itself. After experiencing it as a patient, you may choose to pursue a career assisting others in the same situation. You may want to consider legal education, the medical profession, or an online masters in health administration. As a health administrator, you would oversee the procedures of the staff and medical professionals to avoid malpractice suits in the future.