To be successful in a medical malpractice lawsuit in Ottawa, you must be able to prove that your doctor breached the standard of care. This means that under similar circumstances other doctors would have used a different standard of care, that your doctor’s diagnosis or treatment failed to rise to that standard, and as a consequence, you were injured. Some of the most common standard of care failures that lead to medical malpractice claims includes the following.
Common Medical Standard of Care Failures
1) Failure to appropriately perform a surgical procedure. All Ottawa surgeons are expected to have attained a certain level of skill when it comes to the performance of his or her specialty surgical practice field. And, he or she is expected to bring that expertise to any surgical operation he or she performs. Thus, when a surgeon cuts too deep or in the wrong location, performs an unorthodox procedure, or makes some other obvious surgical mishap that causes his or her patient damage, a medical malpractice may have occurred. Difficult to prove without observation, surgical failures due to medical malpractice are difficult to establish and reconstruct.
2) Diagnosis of a patient’s condition. Every medical malpractice claim starts when a doctor makes a differential diagnosis of his or her patient’s condition and proposes a plan of action to treat that condition or illness. Consequently, every diagnosis and treatment plan has the inherent risk of causing further injury to a patient. It is your doctor’s duty to exercise reasonable judgment in making his or her diagnosis and treatment suggestions, opening up the potential for differential diagnoses and an error in judgment that could lead to a medical malpractice lawsuit.
3) Recommendations for treatment. Most recognisable illnesses have a somewhat standardized protocol when it comes to treatment options that might include medication, surgery, therapy and other forms of care. And, for the most part, choice of treatment is seen as an exercise in medical judgment on the part of your doctor and difficult to base a medical malpractice claim upon. To prevail in proving that a doctor was negligent in treatment of your illness requires that it be ruled out that some other form of treatment would have caused a different outcome had your doctor correctly treating you with it.
4) Informed Consent/Failure to Alert Patients of Potential Risks. By law, patients are required to be notified of any potential risks connected with treatments and the availability of alternative treatments. Doctors must also inform patients of risks associated with a no treatment choice. Even if risks of a particular treatment are minimal, doctors must advise patients of any risks of injury or death. Failure to alert patients to any potential treatment risks is considered a breach in the standard of care if it can be proven that a patient who acting in a reasonable fashion under the circumstances would have chosen to not undertake a particular proposed treatment protocol had that patient been aware of the risks.
Contact an Experienced Medical Malpractice Ottawa Personal Injury Lawyer to Determine Your Options
Doctors and other healthcare providers are required by Canadian law to conduct their practices in a reasonable fashion as determined by the field of medicine in which they operate. Any time a doctor fails to meet the standard of care as dictated by his or her particular medical practice, he or she puts themselves at risk for being sued for medical malpractice should a patient be injured due to those actions regardless of intent. If you have been injured as the result of any failure by a healthcare provider, you may be entitled to compensation. Contact an experienced Ottawa personal injury lawyer experienced in medical malpractice to determine what your rights are and what options you may have to pursue compensation for your damages.
