In our last couple posts, we’ve been speaking about the elements of medical malpractice claims, focusing particularly on the harm element, which can be said to tie together the other elements, at least in claims which have merit. The same could also, though, be...
In our last post, we spoke briefly about the basic elements in a medical malpractice case. To briefly recap, these are: duty; breach; causation; and harm. Here, we’d like to talk briefly about the harm element, which kind of ties together the first three...
Medical errors occur all the time, but those who are familiar with the area of medical malpractice know that it is only a fraction of medical errors which ultimately provide the basis for successful medical malpractice lawsuits. There are a variety of reasons for...
The principles of the practice of medicine and the standards of care that apply to health care professionals are not something those of us who work outside the profession are qualified to speak about in a court of law. Because the issues that come up in malpractice...
Medical error is more commonplace than many Americans realize. According to Consumer Reports, an estimated 440,000 Americans die each year after suffering medical errors. To be fair, it isn’t clear how closely medical errors are tied to those patient...
For consumers of medical services, which is all of us, the way we approach purchasing health care is very different from the way we think about purchasing, say, a home, car or electric razor. For the average person, it is very difficult to make any kind of objective...
A recent article in the Huffington Post, looking at the current Ebola epidemic and the risk here in the United States, asked the interesting question of whether or not physicians have a duty to treat patients who present the symptoms of Ebola. While we would like to...
Medical errors come in a variety of forms, including birth injuries, surgical errors, failure to diagnose, and so on. One form of medical error that is often overlooked, though, is medication errors. Mistakes with respect to the type and amount of medication are very...
What if there was a single test doctors could use to screen for various types of cancer? A recent research effort conducted at the National Cancer Research Institute in Liverpool looked at thousands of previous scientific publications with the aim of determining...
Medical errors can have serious consequences for patients, including serious injury and death. When it comes to fighting the potential threat of Ebola in the United States, though, medical error could have a much more wide-spread negative impact, potentially affecting...
