Campbellsville Medical Malpractice Lawyer

Medical malpractice is when someone is seeking medical treatment and a doctor or nursing practitioner or any health care providers providing care makes a medical mistake, which, in turn, causes that individual injury. If you were injured by a person providing medical care due to a lack of reasonable and expected care, a Campbellsville personal injury lawyer can help you obtain compensation for the damages caused by their negligence.

Determining Negligence

In Kentucky and in most states, there is a definition of negligence, and that is defined as a duty owed. A health care provider owes a duty to the patient to provide them reasonable medical care as defined by a reasonable physician or health care provider acting under the same or similar circumstances.

After a medical malpractice lawyer in Campbellsville has assessed that there is a duty, there must be a violation of that duty. This means that the provider deviated from the expected standard of care. After that element of negligence is determined, an individual has to show that the patient suffered injuries and, finally, that the injuries were caused by the medical mistakes that the healthcare provider made.

Mistakes

A provider can make a mistake and even deviate from the standard of the care, however, if the mistake does not cause anyone harm, it is not medical malpractice. For a Campbellsville attorney to bring a medical malpractice claim because an individual has to show that the mistake caused injury and the mistake was the proximate cause of a person’s injury. So, if the patient was not injured by the mistake or negligence, there will not be a legitimate medical malpractice claim.

Common Medical Malpractice Claims

There is not necessarily a common form of medical malpractice due to the many different areas of medicine and ways that a health care provider can make mistakes or be negligent in their care.

For instance, a surgeon could leaves a sponge or piece of equipment in the patient’s body during the surgery, a medical professional may misdiagnose or delay a diagnosis resulting in a worsening of the prognosis, or even amputation of the wrong leg.

There are even types of wrongful death medical malpractice cases in which a medical provider has not treated or identified post-traumatic stress disorder and, as a result, the person commits suicide.

Medical mistakes are one of the highest causes of death for adults in the United States with over 400,000 medical mistakes occurring every year.

There are many hospitals in the Campbellsville area where a medical malpractice can occur, as well as doctor’s offices and urgent care centers.

Speaking With an Attorney

The attorney will ask a lot of questions because this is a very complex area of the law. Specifically, they will want to know the following:

• Who prescribed treatment
• Names of who the patient followed-up with
• Who the care provider has treated in the past
• What occurred that led the patient to believe there was a medical error
• What have been the complications
• What has been the follow-up

The injured will receive a very, very thorough consultation with our office.

Importance of an Attorney

Medical malpractice is an extremely complex, difficult area of the law that requires an attorney that has practiced medical malpractice in Campbellsville for a long period of time. They need an understanding of the medicine involved as well as have access to experts that can help them establish causation and establish if there was a medical mistake. So, it’s extremely important that an injured person hire an attorney right away.

Another reason for hiring an attorney right away is, in Kentucky, a person only has a one-year statute of limitation. This means an individual only has one year to file a suit from the date of the mistake or the date that it recently should have been discovered. So, the instance that a person believes that there may have been medical malpractice, that person needs to contact an attorney.

First and foremost, the attorney is going to be able to get the medical records. The attorney will have the injured person sign an authorization to get all the medical records the injured person needs. Because a qualified attorney will understand the complex medical issues, he or she will be able to explain them in layman’s terms, so the injured can understand what has happened as a result of the malpractice and what the process will look like moving forward.  The attorney will also be able to identify the right individuals to sue based on the review of the medical record and whether, in fact, the injured has a case.