Common Examples of Emergency Room Negligence
Going to the emergency room is a stressful experience. People don’t go to the ER because they’re having a small problem—it’s usually because they are in intense pain, very sick, and need immediate treatment for whatever is wrong with them. When you decide to go to the emergency room, you expect the nurses, doctors, and other staff to take care of you and treat you carefully.
However, that’s not always the case. Sometimes, the staff in the emergency room can be negligent and cause you harm. Mistakes made in this department can be especially damaging because patients need quick and correct treatment for what’s ailing them. When they experience negligence that leads to injuries and other damages, a medical malpractice attorney can help them recover.
Let’s take a look at the different types of errors that can occur in emergency rooms so that you can identify when you’ve experienced negligence.
Examples of ER Negligence
In 2018, there were over 130 million visits to the ER in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 35 million of these visits are for injuries, and 16 million of these patients require further hospitalization. With that many visits and injuries, some patients are bound to get subpar care that leaves them worse off than when they came in.
If you were one of those patients who experienced negligence from their medical professionals while in the emergency room, you might be wondering if this is a common experience. When it comes to ER negligence, some examples are more common than others. Here are some of the different medical errors that occur in emergency rooms that you might have experienced:
- Medication errors
- Misdiagnosis
- Missed diagnosis
- Missing the diagnosis of heart attacks and strokes
- Wrong prescriptions
- Interpretation errors of tests and charts
- Releasing patients who should not be released
- Not giving antibiotics to patients with open fractures
- Securing an airway for patients with extreme injuries
- Not treating potentially severe situations with the seriousness they require
The biggest problem caused by negligence in the emergency room is that patients need quick help, and it needs to be accurate to the symptoms they’re experiencing. If a worker isn’t attentive and fully aware of what’s happening, the patient could easily suffer from more injuries because their ailment is overlooked.
Many workers also are too willing to think that the patient’s symptoms aren’t as bad as they say. They might want to think that they are experiencing a mild ailment, not the most severe option of what their symptoms might point to. This can be very damaging and lead to medical malpractice because the patient is actually experiencing a serious event.
When you’ve gone to an emergency room and experienced negligence, you could use the help of a med mal lawyer. Let’s take a look at how that attorney would prove negligence and get you justice.
Proving Negligence in an Emergency Room
When you have a medical malpractice lawyer on your side, they’ll help you prove that what you experienced in the emergency room was an instance of negligence, and that you deserve to have justice. Through a thorough investigation, your lawyer will work to prove these elements in Georgia:
- A duty of care existed because they were your doctor, and they failed to exercise that duty.
- That breach of duty of care is what caused your injury.
As a patient in an emergency room, you deserve to get expert care that takes all of your symptoms into account. If your doctors don’t provide you with proper care, and act negligently in any way, then you could suffer from more injuries and require even more care.
When that is the case, you could have experienced medical malpractice from the healthcare workers’ negligent actions. With a lawyer on your side, you can recover compensation for the damages that you suffered as a result of the negligence.
Bey & Associates Is Prepared to Represent You
You trust doctors and nurses in the emergency room to take care of you promptly and correctly. When they aren’t competent, rush your treatment, or just don’t pay attention, then you could suffer at their hands. If you incur injuries and damages from the negligence of an emergency room worker, you could use the help of an Atlanta medical malpractice lawyer.
At Bey & Associates, we understand that an instance of med mal can leave you feeling vulnerable. That’s why we’re here to help you. We’ll handle the legal side of things so that you can focus on healing. Contact our office today so that we can discuss your legal options and determine where to start your claim.
