Treating the Incorrect Patient - Medical Errors
It's alarming to many of our clients just how often medical mistakes occur. One would assume that in a country as advanced as the United States, our doctors and medical professionals would be less prone to making errors of any kind, but that is unfortunately not true. Sadly, we find that patients suffer as a result of various lapses in judgment and mistakes. In all of those cases, the victims and their loved ones need to reach out to skilled medical malpractice attorneys who can help them in their time of legal need.
Right now, we want to focus on a particular kind of medical mistakes that involve treating the wrong patient. We'll cover examples of this so you understand why this is so serious, and then we'll focus on how we can help you.
About Medical Malpractice
First a basic definition of medical malpractice. Medical malpractice refers to any mistakes made by medical professionals that lead to harm or injury to a patient. This covers physicians, surgeons, nurses, radiologists, pharmacists, and so on.
What does it mean to treat the incorrect patient?
By treating the incorrect patient, this means that one patient receives the care that was intended for another patient. This is often as case of mistaken identity or poorly verified identity, and it can occur at a clerical or administrative level or even in actual hospitals and doctor's offices if charts are misplaced.
Why This Needs to Be Taken So Seriously
If a person does not receive the correct medical care for his or her conditions, this can have dire consequences. Often, when doctors treat the incorrect patient it means that the patient being treated has his or her well-being put at risk. Sometimes this can mean unnecessary surgery or the wrong medication. Whatever the case may be, this is an inexcusable error.
Examples of Treating the Wrong Patient
Some examples of these kinds of doctor and hospital errors include:
- Incorrect surgical procedures being performed
- Patients receiving the wrong medication
- Patients undergoing improper therapies
- Patients getting the wrong organ or part x-rayed
What Doctors and Hospitals Need to Do
We feel that doctors and medical staff need to take greater care in verifying the identity of patients. This includes proper entry of names at a clerical and administrative level a well as simple verifications when face-to-face with the patient and/or the patient's loved ones. The fact that this is a generally simple fix and such a common sense exercise of basic attentiveness is why we take these kinds of cases so seriously.
How Our Legal Team Can Help You
Our medical malpractice lawyers will fight diligently for you and your loved ones each step of the way. We will take all negligent medical professionals to task to ensure that the people who make such serious mistakes are properly rooted out.
Learn More About Medical Malpractice Lawsuits
For more information about medical errors and what your legal rights are following such acts of negligence, be sure to contact our medical malpractice attorneys serving Provo today. The entire team here looks forward to meeting you in person and helping you achieve justice as well as just compensation for any hardships that you have experienced.