Below are some of the most common medical negligence claims. Each would normally be completely avoidable had the medical practitioner adhered to their duty of care.
Misdiagnosis
When you go see a medical practitioner, their goal is to uncover what is troubling you. This diagnosis will determine your course of treatment and your road to recovery. However, medical practitioners can get this wrong. This misdiagnosis can worsen your condition and often, with misdiagnosis cases, the treatment given to them is not addressing the issue.
The most common cases include:
- Failure to recognise symptoms of an illness
- Cancer misdiagnosis
- Misdiagnosis of testicular torsion
- Misdiagnosis of fractures and breaks
Delayed Diagnosis
Delayed diagnosis can be established if you can demonstrate that another medical professional would have diagnosed the patient quicker than the original medical practitioner. Delayed diagnosis can worsen a possibly avoidable condition.
Surgical Error
Surgical errors are among the most devastating medical mistakes you can suffer. Errors in surgery can happen before during and after the surgery occurred.
A surgical error medical negligence claim not only has to show that you suffered an injury as a result of your surgeon’s or hospital’s negligence, it also has to be proven that the mistakes were avoidable at the time.
Some of the most common surgical error claims have involved:
- Misdiagnosis of a patient’s condition
- Retained surgical instruments
- Surgery without consent
- Failure to monitor a patient’s vitals during surgery
- Poor aftercare
- Anaesthesia errors
- Errors in cosmetic surgery
- Unnecessary surgery
- Wrong site surgery
- Failure to interpret x-rays, scans or MRIs correctly
- Damage to internal organs, nerves, unintentional lacerations
Medication administration errors
When prescribing medication doctors need to take into account whether it will have an effect when combined with other forms of medication. In cases where a doctor fails to take this into account and you suffer an injury, they may be held liable.
Wrong prescription
If your doctor prescribes the wrong medication which leads to an injury or illness, they may be held liable. This can also happen when a pharmacist gives you the incorrect prescription, despite the doctor prescribing the correct dosage and medication. In these cases, the pharmacist may be held liable for any injuries.
Medical allergy claims
Medical practitioners have a duty to check the medical history of their patients. This is to ensure they do not have an allergic reaction to the prescribed medicine. If a medical professional fails to check history and the patient has a severe allergic reaction, they could be held liable.
What medical practitioners can be held liable?
Here is a list of medical practitioners that have been attributed to medical negligence claims previously:
- GPs
- Doctors
- Nurses
- Lab Technicians
- Medical consultants
- Surgeons
- Anaesthesiologists
- Cardiologists
- Acupuncturists
- Chiropractors
- Osteopaths
- Pharmacists
- Plastic surgeons
- Physiotherapists
- Opticians
- Dentists
- Psychologists
The list can also include various members of a medical facility, either in the private or public sector.
