Hospital Injuries

The establishment of a doctor-patient relationship. This means the doctor was hired and agreed to provide treatment. You can’t file medical malpractice charges against a medical professional you spoke to in the hospital cafeteria (unless he or she was in fact your doctor). It’s easy to prove the existence of a physician-patient relationship if you signed up for the doctor’s services and he or she treated you.

Physician negligence. This is not as easy to establish. Just because your treatment was ineffectual doesn’t mean your doctor or physician was carelessly negligent or behaved improperly. Whether the doctor was reasonably skillful and careful is often be the main focus of malpractice claims. This is determined by comparison to a hypothetical competent doctor. To be negligent, a doctor must deviate from the appropriate standard of care.

Negligence caused the injury or illness. Many malpractice cases start with patients who are already sick or injured, so it can be difficult to determine if a doctor’s negligence is to blame for deterioration or decline in a patient’s health. This gets even more complicated when a patient is critically ill; if someone dies after receiving treatment for lung cancer, is malpractice or terminal illness to blame? To sue for malpractice, a patient should show it is “more likely than not” that their physician’s incompetence caused illness or injury. Proving this might require testimony from another medical expert.

Injury or illness led to specific damages. Even when a doctor is found to be negligent, a lawsuit isn’t a sure thing. A patient can’t sue for malpractice if no harm was done. Patients can sue for physical pain, additional medical bills, mental anguish, and lost work. If a doctor’s mistake doesn’t cause any of these, a lawsuit might not stand up in court.