Medical negligence happens if a patient is harmed by a healthcare provider such as doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. These healthcare providers failed to perform the correct medical duties in taking care of a patient. One of the most common rules in filing a medical negligence case against to healthcare providers, is you don’t need to notify the doctor ahead of time and/or you need to bring a lawsuit with you, but still, it varies depends on the country or state.
But there are some general information and wide categories of rules that apply to some medical negligence cases. To help you with this, below are some important details about the law and special rules that you must need to know.
Medical Negligence 101: Requirements for a Claim
In order to prove that medical negligence happened to you, you must be able to present the following things:
- Doctor-Patient Relationship: You must prove that you had a patient-doctor relationship with the healthcare provider you are charging. It only means that you hired the doctor to take care of you but failed to perform the correct treatment, surgery, or diagnosis. You can’t sue a doctor you overheard giving a piece of professional health advice to other patients. A doctor should be seeing you and treating you in order to legally charge them.
- The doctor was Negligent: If you’re unhappy and you just don’t like the result of the treatment it doesn’t mean you can sue them right away. A doctor should be negligent relevant to your diagnosis or treatment. In order to sue for medical negligence, you should be able to present that the doctor caused you to harm doesn’t do the correct treatment that a competent doctor should do. Of course, a doctor shouldn’t be the best as possible, but a doctor should simply be skillful and most importantly, careful.
- Doctor’s Malpractice Caused the Injury: Most of the malpractice cases involve patients who already sick or injured at the moment, that’s why there are questions whether if the doctor is really negligent or not. If a patient dies after treatment due to lung cancer, it’s hard to prove that the doctor did do something negligent. A patient should show that it is more likely the doctor’s negligence that caused or worsen the injury. Basically, a patient needs a medical expert to testify to the doctor’s incompetence.
- Injury Caused Specific Damages: A patient can’t sue the doctor for medical negligence if you as a patient doesn’t suffer from any harm or injury. Below are some types of harm a patient can sue:
- Affect the mental health
- Physical pain
- Lost of current work due to the injury
- Additional medical payments
- Loss of income due to the injury
The Bottom Line
If you suspect that you’re suffering from malpractice, you should find a competent law firm to handle your case. Most of the capable law firms today have no win no fee solicitors. If they didn’t win your case at the end, you don’t need to pay them. This can guarantee you a high chance of success rate. Be careful when choosing a law firm, make sure they are expert in handling cases like yours.
