The Definitions Of Malpractice And Malpractice

Every one of us has relied on a medical professional at least a few times in our lives. When we get seriously ill, or suffer a serious injury, we put our health in the hands of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, fully expecting to be treated with a certain degree of professionalism and safety. Unfortunately, sometimes the expected care is not given, or not given to the extent which the ailment requires. In these situations, we can feel blindsided, confused, even taken advantage of.

Medical malpractice lawsuits are an extremely serious topic and have affected numerous patients, doctors, and hospitals across the country. Medical malpractice is defined as “improper, unskilled or negligent treatment of a patient by a physician, dentist, nurse, pharmacist, or other health care professional” (Medical malpractice, n.d.). If a doctor acts negligent and causes harm to a patient, malpractice lawsuits arise. Negligence is the concept of the liability concerning claims of medical malpractice, making this type of litigation part of tort law. Tort law provides that one person may litigate negligence to recover damages for personal injury. Negligence laws are designed to deter careless behavior and also to

Have you or a loved one's health recently been affected by the negligence or misconduct of a physician or medical staff? If so, you may be eligible to file a medical malpractice lawsuit in order to recover damages for your medical costs, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

A civil suit is commonly derived from a private party or individual, who alleges damages from duty of care. Once a civil case begins, it is the duty of the plaintiff to prove, with evidence, duty of care, breach of duty, causation, and damages. Conversely, the defendant must prove their affirmative defense against documented allegations. The Oliver versus Brock case proves the importance of supporting evidence as opposed to hearsay statements, to prove the truth of the matter. In the Oliver versus Brock case, Cathy (Plaintiff) filed a lawsuit against Bryan Whitfield Memorial Hospital of Demopolis and the treating physicians Dr. F.S. Whitfield, Dr. Paul Ketcham and Dr. E.C. Brock (Defendant) for negligence of care. Analyzing the facts in

Medical malpractice happens when a hospital, doctor or other health care professional, perform negligence through their practice and causes an injury to a patient, it may be the result of mistakes in diagnosis, management and after care or health management. (Podgers, 2007)

Medical malpractice has been an issue for many years and still occurs at a high rate of up to 440,000 deaths (“Proposition 46”). This clearly is a problem, but one it is one that cannot be solved easily. Bob Pack started the campaign to push for Proposition 46. The passing of this proposal will require drug and alcohol testing for doctors, addictive prescription drugs to be tracked through a prescription drug registry, and will increase the cap on the noneconomic damages (“Proposition 46”). This may seem like a great way to reduce medical malpractice and provide greater health insurance, but this is not necessarily true….

A second issue is malpractice. Malpractice issues are always present in an unstable environment where patients will seek to remedy an incident if they feel they have been harmed (Hamric, 2009). It is important to always act in a reasonable way as a health care clinician but unfortunately there are always those who are negligent in their actions as practitioners.

Medical Malpractice consists of negligence committed by a medical professional. There are many possible events that can occur in the practice of medicine. When physician make a medical error it could possible result in an injury. We often put our faith in doctor to make the right medical decision for us. However, medical malpractice does not always hold up since some patient can take advance of the system. There are some defenses that exist when talking about the medical malpractice.

For a plaintiff to triumph a claim of medical malpractice for negligence, four elements must be established. The first element is proving the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff. The second is to show that the defendant breached the duty to the plaintiff. The third is to show that the plaintiff was harmed and experienced damages. Finally, the fourth is to show that the plaintiff was harmed by the actions of the defendant (Greenberg, 2009).

In the state of Alabama in terms of malpractice actions they are steep. The medical liability provisions of the legislation were based on (MICRA) and included a cap of $400,000 on noneconomic damages including punitive damages, collateral source offset, and mandatory sporadic payouts of future damages, (Nelson, L. J., Morrisey, M. A., & Kilgore, M. L., 2007). This was eventually discharged as the Alabama Courts did not approve of this legislation. The reason being is the Alabama Courts did not foresee any substantial evidence that this legislation didn’t reduce malpractice premiums or health care costs. However, in the 1990’s, with more studies, and republican justices supported and insisted on the change for caps on Medicare malpractices. Most recoveries by patients decreased dramatically by $20,000 after the enactment of the damages cap and increased by twice following judicial nullification. That is a huge gap compared to other states and malpractice cases that don’t have a big recovery length of time. Medical malpractice in Pennsylvania indicates lawsuits are not responsible for rising medical malpractice insurance premiums in Pennsylvania, (The Facts about Medical Malpractice in Pennsylvania, 2004). It’s all because of declining medical malpractice awards and per Pennsylvania physicians has decreased in the early 90’s and 2000’s. Additionally, the number of million-dollar jury verdicts fell by 50 percent 2000 to 2002, according to (The Facts about Medical Malpractice in Pennsylvania,

Section 1: In the first section of the paper, you should give careful thought to how you might define the policy problem.

Clinical negligence claims have been said to act as a `wake-up call’’ since usually it is only when a case is won that issues relating to malpractice are brought to surface. Moreover, case law demonstrates that it is usually only when clinical negligence claims are brought to the court are the judiciary provided with the opportunity to define

Health risk the growth of mal practice and the deposition of quality care needs improvement, many patients are not receiving the fair treatment due compensation. Patients liability should be upheld within any health facility The safety for patients and medical liability is important in healthcare because many physicians have obligations required to be fulfilled by law to make sure the quality of care is done in a professional manner.federal law has created an legal system that still faces issues dealing with quality of care.Many health physicians still lack accuracy when it comes to a patients liability. Malpractice has not made the right changes to set forth better effort to the improvement of quality health care.The way courts handle

Patients put a lot of trust in their doctors and physicians. We believe that they are trained to diagnose properly. They are scientists who base their predictions on chemical and physical evidence and with years of school and training arrive at a conclusion. However, they are human and can make mistakes. Almost 20% of patients are misdiagnosed. Some are simple and innocuous while others can be life-threatening. The typical behavior for a trained physician who is not sure of their answer is to resist the quick diagnosis and recommend the patient to a specialist or another doctor for a second opinion. Misdiagnosis can lead to incorrect treatments and unneeded surgeries, all the while, putting the patient at risk and missing the opportunity to treat the real disease while allowing the condition to worsen.

Describe the 6 essential elements of malpractice substantiated or not substantiated in the case. 20 points