Seeking Medical Attention After a Prince William County Car Accident

If you’re at the scene of an accident and you’re feeling pain, then you should call for an ambulance. If the ambulance comes, then you should tell the emergency personnel everything that is bothering you as a result of the accident. By doing that, you’re allowing them to have a full idea of the extent of your injuries so they can best treat you. Furthermore, if you make sure those injuries are well documented, you’re establishing the accident as causation for the injuries. This can help a Prince William County car accident attorney build your case to receive compensation. If an ambulance doesn’t come, then you should go to the emergency room immediately and talk to medical personnel there instead.

Importance of Seeking Medical Attention

The longer you delay in seeking medical treatment, the harder it will be for you to later prove that your injuries were related to your accident. If too much time passes between the accident and the assessment of your injuries, it leads to the possible inference that something besides the car accident could have caused your injuries. This is often problematic when your injuries develop into much worse symptoms or continue to persist long after the accident. For instance, a sprained ankle left untreated or unnoticed by a medical professional will only get worse as time goes on. And if enough time has gone by without getting treatment, then perhaps the only resolution will be to get surgery on that ankle.

While going to the doctor may seem like an inconvenience or a waste of time and money, it can help you out in the long run. It prevents injuries from being ignored and then developing into something worse, and it helps you prove that your injuries are causally related to Prince William County car accident you were involved in.

Refusing Medical Attention

When you refuse medical treatment for whatever reason, you will have to explain that if you bring a lawsuit or a claim against an insurance company. The reason for this is causation. If you’re saying that you were injured as a result of an accident caused by someone else, you have to show that the injuries are connected to the accident. If you refused medical treatment at the time of the accident that could lead to an inference that you were not actually injured or things were okay. And the longer you wait between your refusal of treatment and finally seeking treatment, the more you’ll strengthen the inference that your injuries were not related to the accident because there’s no evidence that you felt injuries immediately following the accident.

Therefore, if you refuse treatment, you will have to be able to explain that. One explanation that you might use is that there’s no one there to drive your car from the scene of the accident and you can’t afford a towing or impounding fee, so you can’t leave in an ambulance. If you’re in that situation, what you might want to do is drive your car from the scene and have someone else drive you to a hospital. That way, you’ll have you car and not have to get it from impoundment later. In general, if you seek medical treatment the same day or a day or two after the accident, that will be okay; it won’t hurt your claim of causation because you’re seeking medical treatment for those injuries close in time to the accident itself.

Consequences of Refusing Medical Attention on a Claim

If a year goes by and you tell a doctor that you were in an accident in Prince William County and now you need surgery, he or she may or may not be able to tell you that your injury was caused by the accident due to the passage of time. On the other hand, if you see a doctor within a day or two after you were in an accident, then he or she can clearly link the two. And this is really important for your case if you’re making a claim against the other driver. In order to recover for any injuries that you claim you suffered from the car accident, you will need to prove via medical evidence that the injuries are causally related to the accident. If you cannot do that, you will not be able to win your case and you will recover nothing.

Failing to Follow a Doctor’s Orders

If you don’t have a good reason for not following the doctor’s recommendations, then that could hurt the value of your case. It’s much harder to show that you’ve been injured if you don’t follow the doctor’s treatment. Also, if you don’t follow the doctor’s treatment, sometimes your injuries can get worse. You’re obligated to mitigate your own damages, and if your injuries get worse because you ignored them or failed to address them properly, then you can’t claim that your worsened condition is someone else’s fault.

Injuries are more likely to get better if you follow the doctor’s orders and follow up with the medical treatment. If someone has, say, an infection and doesn’t do anything about it or doesn’t follow doctor’s orders, that infection will likely get worse. You can’t claim benefits for having a more severe injury because you didn’t take the steps needed to remedy that injury in the first place.

Excuses for Not Following a Doctor’s Orders

Sometimes, people don’t have the time and/or money to follow up with medical care. And that explanation is legitimate, but it has to be proven. If you’re not willing to follow up with medical care or follow doctor’s orders, then you have to explain why, and it’s up to the judge or the jury to believe those explanations in order to determine the value of your case.

Some people can’t miss time from work, so they can’t follow up with a physical therapy regimen. Physical therapists or doctors in Prince William County can require weekly, monthly or bimonthly follow-ups, and some people cannot take time off of work to go to these appointments. Since many doctors don’t provide care or treatment on the weekends, people have to decide whether to go to work or to get treatment.

Possibility of Needing Surgery

Surgery may have been inevitable, but if it could have been avoided with proper follow-up and consultation with a doctor, you worsened an injury that was initially minor by ignoring it. Some people ignore their injuries and don’t bother going to the doctor because they think either that an injury will heal on its own or that it’s a waste of time going to the emergency room (ER) for what they perceive to be minor injuries. This is a mistake because if your injury develops into something much worse and requires major medical treatment, then depending on how much time has passed between the Prince William car accident and the need for this medical treatment, you might have trouble proving that your injuries are related to the accident.