Medical malpractice occurs when a hospital, doctor, nurse, or other health care professional deviates from standards of care in their profession through a negligent act or omission and causes an injury to a patient. The negligence might be the result of errors in diagnosis, treatment, aftercare, or health management.

Examples of medical negligence include the surgery performed on the wrong body part, wrong procedure being performed, unnecessary surgery, surgical errors, objects retained during surgery, failure to understand or recognize symptoms that should be reported, patient suicide, and typically any type of event that should never take place in a medical facility under any circumstance.

When reviewing a case for merit regarding medical malpractice, the legal nurse must keep in mind the four elements required: (1) a professional duty owed to the patient; (2) breach of such duty; (3) injury caused by the breach; and (4) resulting damages.

The most distinctive difference between negligence and malpractice is intent. In simple terms, medical negligence involves a person’s failure to exercise care in a way that a reasonable person would have done in a similar situation that resulted in causing a patient harm.

Medical malpractice is a type of negligence when a medical professional knowingly did not follow through with the proper standard of care. That is not to say there was malicious intent to cause harm but causes harm that the doctor or nurse knew could have been prevented if alternative measures were taken.

7 most common sentinel events this year include malpractice issues of:

• Surgical or invasive procedures
• Unassigned events at the time of the report
• Suicide
• Protection events
• Environment events
• Product or device

When reviewing any case for medical malpractice, our team of nurses at Paige Legal Nurse can clearly identify violations in the standard of care and resulting injuries caused by the negligence. Permanency of injuries is also reviewed with life care planning or medical cost projection available as well.

Book your Case Strategy with Paige Legal Nurse Consulting now to thoroughly review all that we can do for you as you pursue your malpractice case.