What Is Medical Malpractice?
In order to be effectively presented to a jury, a medical malpractice case must demonstrate three things: (1) professional negligence; (2) an injury; (3) and proof that the professional negligence caused the injury.
Professional Negligence
In lay terms, negligence is carelessness or a preventable error, a mistake that the professional should have avoided. In legal terms, we say that negligence is when a medical professional fails to provide medical care that meets the “standard of care” required by his or her specialty under the circumstances.
Not every mistake is negligent and many times a bad medical outcome does not mean that the medical staff was negligent. Some complications are not preventable and some illnesses get worse in spite of good care. A medical malpractice case requires that the mistake was preventable because the physician did not follow the standards and protocols of his or her specialty as published in medical text books, medical research journals and medical training. Our attorneys and staff have extensive experience researching these sources and will consult with medical experts to determine whether the care given under your specific circumstances satisfied the national standard of medical care.
What kind of injury must be proven?
The injury must be one that a jury may appreciate and will agree was life-changing for the patient or the patient’s family. It is our job to understand the injury and communicate the circumstances and loss to a jury. Generally, a medical malpractice suit is justified when the patient suffered a severe injury causing loss of work, permanent or long-term loss of function or death.
Causation
In some medical negligence cases we find that there was a bad outcome and that there was negligence, but a civil suit for money damages may only be filed if the negligence was a “factual cause” of the injury or was a substantial cause of the bad outcome.
Causation is often the hardest part of a case to prove and the hardest part of a case for a jury to understand. The lawyers and staff spend a great deal of their time researching the medicine of each case and working with our medical experts to develop ways to communicate the medical link between a physician’s error and the patient’s injury. In many cases, the physician defendant will try to prove that the bad outcome was inevitable, would have happened even if the correct medical care was provided or that the patient herself caused the injury. Only the most experienced medical malpractice attorney will be able to get past this hurdle. The attorneys at Harry S. Cohen have that experience.