Chantilly Medical Malpractice Lawyer
Medical malpractice is highly complex and complicated. It does not exist in common law, for example; it is a creature of Virginia statute. What this means is that a specific statutory guideline should define what exactly medical malpractice is and what it is not. Therefore, understanding medical malpractice is left to experienced medical malpractice attorneys who work with the doctors themselves. One of the other misconceptions about medical malpractice is that it is simply attorneys attacking doctors. Rather, medical malpractice is one of the key ways the medical profession regulates itself. Doctors review other doctors and decide whether or not a doctor lived up to the accepted standard of care.
If you believe you have been injured as a result of medical malpractice, contact a Chantilly injury lawyer for a free consultation.
Defining Medical Malpractice
Medical malpractice in Chantilly occurs when a doctor, hospital, or other medical provider deviates from an accepted standard of care and, as a result of their deviation or breach from this accepted standard of care, a person suffers an injury. Medical malpractice is not simply when a bad result occurs, though that is a common misconception. If an accepted side effect occurs as a result of a dangerous surgical procedure, for example, that is not necessarily medical malpractice. However, if in performing that dangerous, complicated procedure, a hospital, doctor, or other health care provider deviates from the accepted standard of care and, as a result of the deviation, an injury occurs, then that is medical malpractice.
Common Types of Malpractice
The most common forms of medical malpractice include diagnosis errors, surgical errors, medication dosage errors—either the type of medication, the amount, the frequency, or the dosage. Surgical errors include operating on the wrong surgical area, making unnecessary surgical cuts, or severing things that should not be severed during the surgical process, as well as diagnosis errors, which include failing to properly diagnose a condition or something else of that nature.
Distinguishing from Mistakes
The line between a mistake and malpractice occurs when there is an accepted standard of how a procedure, diagnosis, evaluation, or treatment should be done. This is accepted throughout the medical community with the knowledge, experience, and opportunity the medical provider has available to them. Even with all of that information, if the medical providers fail to perform up to that standard of care, that is what results in medical malpractice.
It is not medical malpractice when any error occurs. Medical errors can happen if the results are something that are unforeseen and could not have been known; generally, that would not be medical malpractice. However, when a standard of care can be established for a type of procedure, evaluation, or diagnosis that is performed and then that standard of care is not met, that would create a medical malpractice issue.
Ways a Lawyer Can Help
In medical malpractice, an attorney can help assist a person who has suffered an injury as a result of a medical procedure to determine whether or not the injuries and damages they have suffered were as a result of the accepted risk within a medical procedure, or whether they were results of medical malpractice. If they were injured as a result of medical malpractice, an attorney can help them receive just compensation for the injuries they sustained through no fault of their own.
Very few individuals can prosecute and successfully pursue a Chantilly medical malpractice claim on their own. This is not because non-attorney individuals are not intelligent, but is rather due to the complex nature of these cases. It is important to understand what must be proven and an experienced attorney can help present this. In addition, doctors, lawyers, and insurance companies work hard to keep medical malpractice damages under wraps and to a minimum, so they are going to work very hard to protect their insurance as well.