Medical malpractice can be a devastating trauma for patients seeking medical care. When you trust your health and recovery to a medical professional, you expect that they will provide care and not cause further harm. So when the care you receive causes further harm, it can seem like a massive pile on of pain, stress and financial woes.
When a case of medical malpractice involves amputation, the trauma is compounded by life-altering harm. When a patient loses a limb as a result of a medical professional’s negligence, difficulties and challenges mount significantly very quickly thereafter. Aside from the shock and anger, you have implications regarding employment and future earnings and significant recovery costs.
(When Early Discharge Leads to Medical Malpractice)
Proving Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice victims who endure amputations are able to file claims for injuries, expenses, pain and suffering, and in some cases, punitive damages. In order to win your claim, you must show negligence on the part of your medical provider. One key element in bringing a medical malpractice claim is demonstrating that the provider in question owed you a duty of care. For physicians or surgeons, that’s as simple as showing that there was a patient/doctor relationship, that you were officially under that medical professional’s treatment. When this relationship exists, the medical professional owes a duty to their patient to provide care that follows generally accepted practices for their specialty, in their geographical location and applied to methodologies appropriate for the patient’s condition and demographics.
Once that duty of care has been established, the plaintiff must demonstrate that the defendant failed to provide care according to those generally accepted practices and that that failure is the cause of the patient’s injuries. A breach of the medical provider’s duty of care can involve anything from a failure to diagnose to a failure to provide the appropriate treatment or medical advice to failing to provide the care the patient needed in a timely fashion.
Often, when a patient’s limb is mistakenly amputated, demonstrating that the medical provider failed to provide reasonable care can emanate from the simple fact that they unnecessarily amputated a limb.
In some cases, complications may arise during a medical procedure or surgery that require sudden changes in care. Theoretically, that could result in an unexpected amputation. If the defendant can show that those conditions would lead another medical professional of the same or similar training to take the same approach with the same patient, they can avoid liability in your claim. Put simply, medical emergencies resulting in amputations do not constitute medical malpractice if the procedure that resulted and the steps the physician took are those that any reasonable physician would have taken under the same circumstances.
However, there have been cases where surgeons performed a scheduled (and necessary) amputation on the wrong patient due to a records or administrative failure. For this kind of egregious error, medical malpractice is absolutely going to be a viable legal remedy.
Seeking Help from an Experienced Medical Malpractice Attorney
Still, proving negligence and establishing that reasonable care was indeed breached often requires the expert testimony of medical professionals of similar or the same background as the provider in your case. Consulting an experienced medical malpractice attorney can be of tremendous help in filing your claim, developing witness testimony and negotiating damages in your case. An injury attorney will also understand the full scope of damages to which you may be entitled, leaving no potential compensation on the table.
If you are looking for a Chicago personal injury attorney that fights tirelessly to win you the highest award damages you’re entitled to receive, call Bizzieri Law Offices in Chicago at 773.881.9000. There is no fee for the case review, and we never get paid unless we win compensation for you.