The Top 8 Common Examples of Medical Malpractice You Should Know About

Going to the doctor should leave you feeling healthier—or at least give you a pathway back to health. However, preventable mistakes in hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices cause harm to thousands of patients every year. For a medical malpractice claim to be successful, the state of Ohio requires clear proof that a medical provider failed to meet the standard of care for their profession and that their failure caused injury.

This isn’t always an easy hurdle to clear, but having the right legal team helps. At Crandall & Pera Law, we fight aggressively to help our injured clients get the justice and compensation they deserve. Call us now to discuss your case with an Ohio medical malpractice attorney.

1. Misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis

One of the most common medical errors isn’t about what a doctor does, but about something they fail to do. When a doctor doesn’t listen to a patient’s symptoms, fails to order appropriate diagnostic screenings, or misses the clear signs of a serious health issue, patients are the ones who pay the price. For example, if a physician waves off a patient’s chest pain as indigestion rather than checking for a heart attack, it may be considered malpractice if that patient goes on to have a preventable heart attack.

These cases hinge on whether or not the doctor reasonably should have diagnosed the illness, either at all or sooner. This generally means bringing in expert witnesses—physicians in the same or a substantially similar specialty who can attest to what they would have done in the same situation.

2. Surgical errors or mistakes

Even the most routine surgery involves some level of risk, and some poor outcomes are unavoidable. However, there are many negative outcomes that are preventable. Operating on the wrong body part, leaving surgical tools or items inside a patient, or causing permanent nerve damage due to inattentive care are all forms of surgical malpractice. While surgical facilities now have extensive checklists and protocols to prevent these errors, some still slip through—and when they do, patients may have a medical malpractice case.

3. Medication and prescription errors

A single medication error can have catastrophic or fatal consequences for a patient. Consider an extra zero at the end of a dosage, medication given to the wrong patient, or medication that interacts negatively with a patient’s current prescriptions. Common types of medication errors include prescribing the wrong drug or dose, failing to check for dangerous drug interactions, ignoring allergies, not considering how a drug may affect kidney or liver function, and mislabeling or incorrectly dispensing medications.

These errors play out in a number of ways. Consider, for example, a diabetic patient who is prescribed a medication that drastically lowers their blood sugar without proper monitoring. Or imagine a prescriber who misreads Celebrex as Celexa and gives a non-depressed patient an SSRI instead of an NSAID. Medication errors are almost always preventable with the right safeguards in place.

4. Anesthesia errors

Anesthesia is one of the most dangerous parts of surgery. When a patient receives too little, they can experience excruciating pain and put the surgery at risk. When they receive too much, their heart rate and other vital signs may drop so low that they suffer brain injury or cardiac arrest. This is why anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists are present before, during, and after surgery—they ensure that the proper medication is given, that the patient’s vital signs are stable, and that the patient wakes up at an appropriate time after surgery. When they administer too much anesthetic, fail to monitor vital signs, or do not notice that a patient has stopped breathing, they may be guilty of medical malpractice.

5. Birth injuries

Perhaps one of the most devastating types of medical malpractice comes from preventable birth injuries. Your child’s birth should be one of the most exciting days of your life, but for parents who lose their child or find out that they’ve suffered a preventable disability, it may be one of the saddest. Mothers, too, can suffer from injuries during birth; for example, a poorly executed forceps delivery may leave a mother with permanent incontinence or pelvic floor dysfunction. While some birth injuries are not preventable, some are the result of inaction by a medical care provider.

6. Failure to monitor or provide proper follow-up

Medical care doesn’t end when a procedure is done or a patient is discharged. Care providers must monitor vital signs, respond to alarms, and follow up on test results or medication changes to ensure that a patient receives the care they need. Consider, for example, a lab result that comes back showing that a patient has abnormal liver enzyme levels. If the care provider never communicates these results to the patient or follows up with them, they may have committed malpractice if that patient goes on to suffer permanent liver damage as a result of their inaction.

7. Failure to obtain informed consent

Before undergoing a procedure or starting a medication, patients have the right to understand what is being recommended, the potential side effects of going through with the treatment, and the potential impacts of not going through with the treatment. When care providers skip this step or downplay potential negative outcomes to try to persuade a patient to go through with a procedure, it could be medical malpractice.

8. Failure to refer and patient abandonment

Doctors have to know when a patient’s needs are out of their scope of practice. At that point, they should refer them to a specialist. When they do not do so or when they abruptly stop seeing a patient without transferring care, they leave patients without the medical care they need.

Are you a victim of medical malpractice?

If you’ve suffered poor care at the hands of a medical professional, you may have a valid medical malpractice claim. Learn more about your next steps now by calling Crandall & Pera Law or reaching out online. We’re here to support you as you fight for justice.