Doctors preparing for surgery

Medical Malpractice

What is and What Isn’t Medical Malpractice? Should I Speak with a Malpractice Attorney?

People place a tremendous amount of trust and reliance on doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals. When medical professionals fail to act with a reasonable degree of competence and care, their patients may suffer serious or fatal injuries. Medical malpractice is an unfortunate, but pervasive fact of life.

There are important things to know about medical malpractice though. It’s typically a more complicated subject than most people realize, and isn’t as simple as proving “something went wrong.” Medical procedures have known complications, many of which can occur even when the doctor renders appropriate care. The key element that transforms an ordinary complication into malpractice is “negligence.” To be malpractice, the doctor or practitioner must have rendered the medical care in a careless manner, in a manner which “deviated” from accepted, normal standards of care. The law does not require that the doctor have capabilities equal to the most accomplished in his field, but does require that he follow accepted means and methods of treating the medical condition at issue.

It is the patient’s burden of proof at trial to demonstrate that the doctor departed from accepted standards of care and to prove that the departure caused damage to the patient or in some way made the patient’s condition worse.

If you or a loved one has been injured due to the negligence of a doctor, nurse, or other medical professional, then you have a right to be fairly compensated for your injuries. This is when retaining an experienced medical malpractice attorney becomes important. A typical case investigation usually includes obtaining the medical records, a review of the records by your attorney and in-house background experts, and then having the records reviewed by well-qualified physician experts who practice in the medical specialty at issue. A properly experienced medical malpractice attorney will be able to look at your particular situation and give you a professional opinion as to whether or not something is, in fact, a viable medical malpractice case.

Contact us at RGLZ Personal Injury Law, and we’ll go over the details of your situation, free of charge. Malpractice can be a complicated subject, but thankfully, we have decades of experience handling some of the most complex malpractice cases out there.

We represent clients throughout New York in a wide range of medical malpractice claims, including:

  • Nurse and physician errors
  • Surgical errors
  • Hospital negligence
  • Emergency room negligence
  • Medication errors
  • Birth delivery errors
  • Failure to diagnose
  • Anesthesiologist errors

We handle medical malpractice cases on a contingency fee basis, so we charge no fees unless we recover compensation for you.

We’re a Different Kind of Law Firm. We are Family who can Get You to a Better Place.

At RGLZ, we are committed to helping people who have been injured due to the negligence of medical professionals in New York and throughout Suffolk and Nassau counties on Long Island.

When we choose to take a case, that case becomes our mission.

Contact Us

To schedule a free consultation with one of our Suffolk County medical malpractice lawyers, call 800-734-9445. We promise one of our attorneys will speak with you about your case. It’s a promise we make to put the “personal” back into personal injury law.

FAQs

What Constitutes Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is simply professional negligence, or carelessness on the part of a doctor, nurse or hospital. It requires proof of a departure from accepted standards of medical care. It is not simply the happening of a complication. Complications can and do happen even without any medical negligence. Malpractice is injury which occurs because a health professional failed to act when the professional should have acted, or acted in a careless way. Additionally, the careless act or omission must be shown to have been the cause of an injury or worsening of the patient’s condition.

How do I know if I have a Medical Malpractice Case?

Unlike some more “cut and dry” personal injury matters where the injury or negligence may be obvious, medical malpractice cases can be more complicated. Often the patient is not even aware their complication was caused by medical malpractice until a later-treating doctor or nurse raises their suspicions. Medical malpractice attorneys basically have the dual job of being an attorney and studying medicine for a living. The best way to know if you have a case or not is to speak with an experienced medical malpractice attorney who can help distinguish between ordinary, but dreaded, complications which are not malpractice, and negligence, which constitutes malpractice.