Medical Negligence Lawyers – When Do You Need Them?

Medical negligence is when a doctor or medical professional causes you harm by breaching his or her duty of care.

But one of the most important parts of your medical negligence cause is proving liability.

Liability is a legal term that essentially means proving that it was someone’s fault that you were injured.

As difficult as it can be to hear, not everything that goes wrong in the medical profession is medical malpractice. On top of this, just because something went wrong does not always mean it was someone’s fault.

Unfortunately, modern medicine is not perfect…things can still go wrong even in 2021.

Doctors and medical professionals are only going to be liable for medical negligence if they were part of your treatment team in some way and because of their action caused you preventable harm.

Because medical negligence matter is such a broad area it can be very difficult to understand without examples.

Below we have written a few examples from our professional experience to show the difference between when a doctor will and will not be liable for medical negligence.

However, all cases are going to be different so we highly recommend consulting a legal professional in medical negligence, such as United Legal, if you believe you may have a claim.

Cancer Misdiagnosis

Cancer is one of the greatest health challenges of the 21^st century and continues to be difficult to detect, treat and recover from.

Unfortunately, there are so many different kinds of cancer that can form in innumerable ways which is one of the factors that makes early detection so difficult.

As a result, a doctor may mistakenly fail to identify cancer in a patient.

Cancer misdiagnosis is among the most common type of medical misdiagnosis

Cancer misdiagnosis can be medical negligence if, a reasonable medical professional should and would have diagnosed the patient based on the information available at the time.

The more obvious the diagnosis is, the greater the medical negligence and potential lawsuit may be.

In contrast, if a doctor fails to diagnose cancer but a reasonable medical professional would not have been able to make the diagnosis on the information it likely will not be medical negligence.

For misdiagnosis it is all about whether it would have been possible for the doctor to properly diagnose sooner.

Surgical Errors

Surgical errors can be broken into two broad informal categories.

Category 1 is improper surgery which can include operating on the wrong part of the body, leaving surgical tools in the body, and all the other ways that during the surgery itself a surgeon can make a mistake.

Category 2 is issues with the outcome of the surgery such as unexpected or extensive scarring or the desired purpose of the surgery not occurring.

These kinds of errors are most common in plastic surgery where the expected outcome is not achieved.

As you can see, just with the two broad examples there is so much room for a doctor to make a mistake that could allow you to seek compensation for medical negligence.

However, it is also an incredibly complicated area that can be confusing to navigate or even identify if you have suffered from medical malpractice.

Here at United Legal we specialize in this area of law and can assist you through all steps of the process with years of experience as medical negligence lawyers in Canberra and a compassionate approach to supporting our client’s needs.