Hospitalizations and in-patient surgeries can be overwhelmingly scary for patients and their family members. Individuals who suffer from ailments must spend time away from their loved ones to undergo treatments and procedures that are intended to make them well. However, not all New Orleans residents who must stay in hospitals get better. Unfortunately, some hospital patients die while under their medical personnel’s care, but not all pass on due to complications from their underlying illnesses.
In some cases, hospital patients die because of fatal medical mistakes. There are many ways that doctors, nurses and other hospital staff members can commit deadly errors, but this post will focus on three primary ways patients are fatally impacted by their caregivers: through mistakes in their diagnoses, mistakes in their surgeries and mistakes in the administration of their medications.
A diagnosis is what a patient receives after a doctor has considered the patient’s symptoms, run applicable tests and evaluated possible causes of the patient’s condition. Diagnoses often come with treatment plans, and when a medical professional makes an error in the diagnosis of a patient, that mistake can be life threatening.
Additionally, when a patient receives a diagnosis and the treatment plan for that diagnosis is surgery, errors committed during the surgical procedure can lead to the patient’s death. A doctor may fail to prevent a patient’s bleeding or erroneously operate on the wrong part of the patient’s body. In some cases, doctors have left surgical materials inside of patients and those mistakes can lead to deadly infections and other problems.
Finally, some diagnoses may require patients to take medications to remedy their health conditions. Giving a patient the wrong drug, too much of a drug or mixing particular drugs together can be dangerous and deadly.
When a person suffers the loss of a loved one due to doctor errors and other medical mistakes, they may be entitled to sue for their damages under wrongful death theories of law. A wrongful death lawsuit gives a person the right to seek the damages they sustained when their loved relative perished because of another person’s actions. Lawyers who provide wrongful death services can discuss with readers how they may begin their own litigation based on fatal medical mistakes.
