FAQs About Medical Malpractice Lawsuits

Contact our Rochester medical malpractice attorneys today. You can reach the Law Offices of Scott C. Gottlieb & Associates, LLP, at 800-TALK-LAW (800-825-5529) or you can fill out our online contact form. We are ready to answer your questions and discuss your case during a free initial consultation.

Generally, there are no guarantees of medical results from surgery or other procedures. To successfully claim medical malpractice, you have to show damages or an injury stemming from the doctor’s deviation from the normal standard of care for your condition. 

An experienced medical malpractice attorney can help you to decide if you have a case. Many mistakes are just that, but if your doctor’s mistake was the result of negligence or failure to meet the usual standard of care, the answer may be “yes.” You may be able to recover damages under medical malpractice laws. 

It is common practice for hospital patients to sign a consent form giving the doctor their approval to perform surgery. Through the form, the patient usually consents to the specific surgery, as well as to any other procedures that might become necessary. Prior to signing the document, your doctor should give you a complete description of the surgery and the risks involved, as well as the consequences of not getting the treatment. If you can prove your doctor incorrectly described the facts or failed to adequately tell you about the risks and benefits before surgery, your consent may not be valid. 

Experts – usually other doctors — will testify whether they believe your doctor’s actions followed standard medical practice or fell below that standard of care. For example, in deciding whether your brain surgeon was negligent, a jury will rely on expert testimony to determine what a competent brain surgeon would have done in the same or similar situation. 

A court will look at what reasonable, prudent medical practitioners would have done in the same situation in determining whether the medical practitioner made a mistake. The practitioner could be found negligent if he or she does not meet that standard. 

Medication errors are any preventable event that may cause or lead to inappropriate medication while the medication is in the control of the health care professional, patient or consumer. Such events may be related to professional practice, health care products, procedures and systems including: product labeling, packaging and nomenclature; order communication; prescribing; use; administration; distribution; compounding; dispensing; monitoring; and education. Pharmacists as well may be held responsible for medication errors. 

Contact the Rochester medical malpractice lawyers at The Law Offices of Scott C. Gottlieb & Associates, LLP. Tell us everything that happened to you, beginning with the first time you visited your doctor and continuing through your last contact. What was your illness or injury and how did your medical practitioner treat it? What did your doctor say about your treatment? Did you follow all the medical instructions? The answers to these questions are important if you think your doctor or hospital may have committed malpractice. 

Some common forms of medical malpractice include the following:

• Improper, wrong or untimely diagnosis
• Failure to perform an operation properly or at the right time
• Failure to anticipate a problem that could have been foreseen
• Failure to get clear permission before operating on the patient
• Failure to properly treat a medical condition. 

Medical malpractice arises when a doctor or other health care provider causes injury or death to a patient by failing to meet the applicable standard of care. In other words, health care providers commit medical malpractice and are negligent when they do not act reasonably according to the situation and this conduct causes harm to the patient.