Medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare provider fails to provide medical care that is keeping with good and accepted medical practices and procedures. In other words, a doctor, nurse or technician does something or fails to do something that is important to a patient's good care. Medical malpractice can take many forms, but the following are the most common:
- Anesthesia Error
- Failure to Diagnose
- Failure to Follow Accepted Practices
- Failure to Make Use of Available Technology
- Late Diagnosis
- Misreading CT Scan
- Misreading Mammogram
- Misreading MRI
- Misreading Ultrasound
- Misreading X-Rays
- Surgical Errors
- Wrong Diagnosis
- Wrong Medication and Wrong Amount
- Wrong Treatment
No one expects the medical profession to be perfect, but we do expect to receive proper care when we place ourselves in the hands of the medical profession. We should be able to trust their level of knowledge, skill, and expertise. This is why we seek medical care in the first place. We do not help the medical profession by pretending that mistakes are not being made. Just the opposite. The more we point out and talk about surgical errors, medical mistakes, misdiagnoses, and bad doctors, the safer health care will become.