Patients need to be taken care of. Doctors need to understand as to how difficult it is to live in sickness and look at everyone being healthy and better off. There have been thousands of cases in the US alone where a hospital, doctor or healthcare professional through a neglect act or omission, have caused an injury to the patient.
To be considered medical malpractice under the law, the claim must have the following characteristics:
• A violation of the standard of care – The law acknowledges that there are certain medical standards that are recognized by the profession as being acceptable medical treatment by reasonably prudent health care professionals under like or similar circumstances. This is known as the standard of care. A patient has the right to expect that health care professionals will deliver care that is consistent with these standards. If it is determined that the standard of care has not been met, then negligence may be established.
• An injury was caused by the negligence – For a medical malpractice claim to be valid, it is not sufficient that a health care professional simply violated the standard of care. The patient must also prove he or she sustained an injury that would not have occurred in the absence of negligence. An unfavorable outcome by itself is not malpractice. The patient must prove that the negligence caused the injury. If there is an injury without negligence or negligence that did not cause an injury, there is no case.
• The injury resulted in significant damages – Medical malpractice lawsuits are extremely expensive to litigate, frequently requiring testimony of numerous medical experts and countless hours of deposition testimony. For a case to be viable, the patient must show that significant damages resulted from an injury received due to the medical negligence. If the damages are small, the cost of pursuing the case might be greater than the eventual recovery. To pursue a medical malpractice claim, the patient must show that the injury resulted in disability, loss of income, unusual pain, suffering and hardship, or significant past and future medical bills.
Apart from all the law suits and bills, the emotional trauma caused by a medical malpractice suit to the doctor as well as the patient is unimaginable. For a patient to know that the person he or she trusted with their most precious thing, their life and health did something wrong and put his or her life in danger. If the patient dies due to medical malpractice, then the grief their family having to go through knowing that their loved one would have been alive if not for the doctors incompetence or carelessness, is more then awful. For the doctor or healthcare professional, being aware of the fact that the purpose they devoted their lives to, cost one of their patients his or her health or even worse, their life.
