Medical Misdiagnosis

Under the legal umbrella of Personal Injury Law falls medical malpractice claims like a misdiagnosis. So, without further ado, you can be sure that if you have had an experience at the doctor’s where you think your illness or injury diagnosis was wrong, definitely go and see a personal injury attorney and sort it out. Legally this term is ‘misdiagnosis’ and doctors can get sued for it and have to compensate for the patient’s grievances. But first, we have to be sure what a medical misdiagnosis is and whether it is equivalent to medical malpractice. 

How exactly does a doctor misdiagnose a patient? One of the very common causes of how doctors slip us is when they fail to obtain their patient’s accurate medical history. The paperwork in your file which you take to the doctor should hold all accounts of previous illnesses, and your doctor should ask you about medical concerns you’ve had in the past. Misinterpreting lab reports also leads to misdiagnosis, where the doctor doesn’t pay close attention to the anomalies in the report and follow up on them. And finally, if your doctor doen;t seem interested in listening to the extent of your symptoms during the diagnostic visit, then it is very likely that there will be a misdiagnosis. These are the things your personal injury attorney would be interested in knowing for your case’s sake. 

While this kind of malpractice often results in civil court cases, if the incident resulted in the death of the patient, the family would involve the police and it might turn into a criminal case. But for a general medical malpractice case, the personal injury attorney would require proof of the misdiagnosis and the fact that it caused you harm. So, suppose your doctor was quick to diagnose and perform an operation, this unnecessary surgery becomes a risk to your health by increasing the chances of complications and infection. The doctor’s prescribed medicine may carry a component that you are allergic to or its side effects may interfere with your life. And finally, in serious cases, if the misdiagnosis was a form of cancer, then recommended treatments like chemotherapy or radiation would have worsened your actual condition. So if your medical condition is worsened or the right treatment is delayed causing more harm to you or death, then you are definitely a victim of medical misdiagnosis and should immediately seek legal help from a personal injury law firm. 

Now that you have established that you were indeed misdiagnosed, your lawyer would then require concrete proof that this specific misdiagnosis was the root of your ordeal. It would also have to prove that a reasonable and attentive physician would not have made the same diagnosis under the same circumstances. So, during this lawsuit, your personal injury attorney has to enlist many medical experts to examine your case and determine that what happened to you was indeed not an honest mistake. And after that has been determined, your case would be presented to get you your deserved compensation.