You trust your doctors and other medical professionals to leave you better off than when you entered their office or the hospital. Sometimes, they are negligent, make errors, and cause you harm. At Buckingham Barrera Vega Law Firm, our Rio Rancho, NM medical malpractice lawyer is here to stand up for your rights and ensure you get justice for the injuries you endured at the hand of a negligent healthcare worker.
It can feel intimidating going up against a larger entity, like a hospital, in your medical malpractice claim. Even going up against your doctor or surgeon can feel like a large undertaking, but that’s where one of our lawyers comes in. We have experienced with med mal claims and know how to build you the strongest case possible to put up a winning fight against big or small parties.
What Constitutes as Medical Malpractice?
One of the most important things to note when you’re considering filing a med mal claim is whether or not your experience constitutes as medical malpractice. This might seem obvious, but it might not be as clear cut as you think. Some people might think that medical malpractice is being unhappy with the medical care they received, but that’s not true. Simply being unhappy with your care is not enough, there needs to be actual negligence and an error involved.
In order for you to have a medical malpractice claim, you need to be able to prove that your doctor, surgeon, nurse, or other healthcare worker who was treating you was negligent. There are elements to negligence that are essential to proving medical malpractice happened. Your med mal attorney will work towards proving these elements to see if you have a viable claim:
- A doctor-patient relationship existed between you and your doctor, which meant that they owed you a duty of care.
- Your doctor breached that duty through negligence.
- Their breach directly inflicted you with one or more injuries.
- Those injuries left you with damages.
Your lawyer will need all the documents and evidence you have of your injuries and medical treatment to prove the damages that you suffered. Bringing all the documentation you have will help your attorney build your case and prove the negligent action that led to this instance of medical malpractice.
You might be unsure if you experienced a medical error. Our Rio Rancho, NM medical malpractice attorney can help you determine if what you experienced was caused by medical negligence, but you still might have questions. Let’s take a look at the different types of med mal that could have happened to you so you can better understand your situation.
Types of Med Mal Incidents
You might be wondering if the incident you experienced is considered medical malpractice, or if it falls in line with what lawyers typically see in their med mal claims. There are many different categories of medical errors that can lead to you being injured by the healthcare professional who is treating you. Here are some of the most common types of medical negligence that occur in Rio Rancho:
- Misdiagnosis. When you go to the hospital, you expect your doctor to correctly diagnose you from the details you give them and the tests that they run. If they don’t pay close enough attention, they could diagnose you with the wrong ailment and lead to you going through treatments for something you’re not afflicted by. For example, they misdiagnose you with cancer and you needlessly go through chemo that damages your body because you don’t actually have cancer.
- Missed Diagnosis. Although this might seem the same as a misdiagnosis, a missed diagnosis is slightly different. This is when a doctor misses an obvious illness that you have. For example, if you come into the hospital clearly having a heart attack, and the doctor sends you home, that would be a missed diagnosis.
- Medication Errors. Medication takes careful consideration, and when a medical professional makes a mistake in dosage or administering a drug, it can have severe effects. Giving the wrong medication, improper dose, or wrong administration can cause an allergic reaction, overdose, or even death for a patient.
- Surgical Errors. You’re trusting your surgeon to be careful and make the right decisions while operating on you, but sometimes they can be negligent as well. A surgical error could be operating on the wrong site, nicking another organ with a surgical tool, or leaving tools in the patient’s body after the surgery is over. All these errors can have serious health consequences and will likely lead to you enduring another surgery.
- Birth Injuries. Giving birth is a beautiful process, but sometimes doctors and nurses make mistakes through being too rough or not being experienced in birthing. Whether they hurt your baby through using dangerous tools, twisting their body the wrong way, or not monitoring the situation, or if they make mistakes with your body, you or your baby could suffer from lifelong damages.
- Anesthesia Errors. Anesthesia can be dangerous if not administered correctly. If a patient gets too much or not enough, they could have a severe reaction.
- Infections. When a patient is in the hospital, they are at even greater risk of getting infections. If workers aren’t especially careful about sanitary fields, they can break them and end up contaminating their patients with infections that harm their bodies.
All these medical errors can have serious effects on your health. A Rio Rancho, NM medical malpractice lawyer can help you hold the negligent healthcare worker responsible for what happened so that you can focus on recovery.
Hire an Attorney from Buckingham Barrera Vega Law Firm
Experiencing medical malpractice can leave you feeling incredibly vulnerable. You trusted your doctor or other medical professional to take care of you and leave you better than when you came to them. When their negligence leads to you getting injured, you might feel like you can’t trust doctors again. You also have your damages to worry about, and you might be struggling to heal while paying for your medical bills.
That’s where a Rio Rancho, NM medical malpractice attorney from Buckingham Barrera Vega Law Firm can help. We’ll look into what happened so that we can hold the other party accountable for their negligence. That way, you can get the full and fair compensation you deserve. Reach out to us today for a free consultation.
