What is Medical Liability?
Each year millions of Americans are treated by medical professionals to ensure that their health improves or remains in good standings. These health providers have an obligation to provide competent care to every patient. We are fortunate that improvements in the medical field are advancing daily which allows more people to receive optimal care.
It is the responsibility of your medical providers to remain up-to-date with these emerging advances in; testing, scanning and surgical procedures, while eliminating obsolete medical practices. The requirement for health care professionals to continuously update their knowledge and skills, aids in upholding the fundamental practices on which the basic standard of care is founded. The medical community defines the “basic standard of care” as the care a competent and skilled medical professional, who is in the same specialty and/or field, would have provided given the same circumstance. These community-based standard sets the baseline for all medical malpractice cases.
Although some may only attribute medical malpractice cases to physicians, the entire medical community, including but not limited to, doctors, nurses, therapist, pharmacists, drug companies, hospital staff, technicians, etc. can be held liable for errors which result in the harm of a patient. The guiding question for any medical malpractice claim is whether the medical provider administered treatment in the same method that another health professional, in the alike field, would have provided under identical conditions. If the answer is “No”; the health care professional may have deviated from his responsibility to act in an incompetent manner and can be deemed liable for the patient’s injury and/or death.
When a provider deviates from these basic standards, your health and life are in jeopardy. A few of the most common medical errors involve failure in prenatal diagnostics, errors in surgical procedures, misdiagnosis in test results, failure to detect cancer, and prescription drug errors. All the fore mentioned medical errors stem from deviations by the medical providers in the basic standard of care which can have a debilitating effect or can be fatal. Be sure to speak with a legal professional if you believe your health provider may be liable for your injury or the death of a loved one.