A hospital is supposed to be a place where you and your loved one can get the care you need to get back to your happy, healthy self.
Hospital emergency care requires thorough evaluations and quick decisions. Incomplete evaluations, mistakes, and hasty decisions—to act or to not act—can result in life-changing injuries. Every year more than 250,000 people are injured due to hospital negligence and medical malpractice.
Here are some types of hospital errors and what you should do if you or your loved one suspect hospital negligence.
What is hospital negligence?
Hospital negligence is harm done to an individual due to the error of a medical professional working at a hospital. This could include a variety of actions such as medication errors, wrong-site surgery, failure to diagnose, failure to treat, and misdiagnosis.
Hospital errors often leave victims with catastrophic permanent injuries that could affect their quality of life, and can even result in death. This can lead to further medical assistance such as surgeries or physical therapy.
The National Quality Forum (NQF) qualifies “never events” as errors in medical care that are clearly identifiable, preventable, and serious in their consequences for patients. These events call into question the credibility of the hospital and the reliability and stability of the system in place within the hospital.
Some of these “never events” include:
- Birth injuries:
- Birth injuries include a variety of incidents including injuries due to lack of oxygen, failure to perform a timely C-section, errors in fetal heart monitoring, and more. These injuries can lead to lifelong injuries for the child, increased medical bills for the entire family, and even death.
- Failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis
- Failure to diagnose a life-threatening disease could lead to further injury or even death.
- Failure to treat
- Failure to treat can turn a non-serious situation into a life-threatening situation, resulting in avoidable but permanent, catastrophic personal injuries or death.
- Improper nurse supervision
- Improper nurse supervision could lead to bedsores, slip-and-falls, blood clots, and more.
- Wrong-site surgery
- Wrong-site surgery is when surgery is performed on the wrong patient or wrong body part which can cause catastrophic injury and require more medical procedures and attention.
These are just some of the “never events” that you and your loved one should never have to experience from a medical professional.
What are your next steps if you suspect hospital negligence?
Filing a lawsuit against a hospital can be intimidating. Because a hospital is such a large corporation, emerging victorious from a case may seem nearly impossible.
However, many brave individuals and families have taken the courageous step to hold hospitals, not just medical professionals, accountable so others in the future will not suffer from the same medical errors.
While medical professionals are the ones who make the mistake, oftentimes, it is the entire hospital system that plays a part in medical malpractice.
In a recent medical malpractice case that Maples, Nix, & Diesselhorst was honored to be a part of, the family of a 19-year-old girl named Alexus Jamel Ochoa-Dockins took the courageous step to hold the hospital responsible for Alexus’ death accountable.
In this particular case, an unqualified family nurse practitioner (FNP) was the only medical provider on duty when Alexus arrived at the hospital. The FNP failed to identify the common signs of pulmonary embolism. If diagnosed when she arrived, Alexus would have survived.
While the FNP should’ve known that she was not qualified to treat Alexus, the hospital system and her director should have not put her in that position. A family-certified nurse should never be tasked with diagnosing and treating emergency and acute care patients, especially with no physician supervision.
Sadly, this is not a unique case.
If you or your loved one has experienced medical trauma due to hospital errors, you do not have to handle this experience alone. Hospital errors can leave you and your family with large hospital bills, emotional trauma, and loss of quality of life.
How Maples, Nix, & Diesselhorst Can Help
If you think you have been a victim of hospital malpractice, our dedicated team is equipped to help you and your family seek compensation for recovery.
We have the knowledge, skills, and resources to successfully represent individuals and families throughout Oklahoma who have suffered due to medical malpractice.
When you partner with Maples, Nix, & Diesselhorst, you become a part of our family, and family fights alongside one another.
Call our dedicated team at (800)-539-0652 today for a free case consultation. We stand with you.
