Understanding Medical Malpractice Cases

Doctors are not always right, and sometimes they aren't even competent. Their mistakes make huge impacts on the lives of their patients, causing emotional, economic and physical harm. After the emotions subside surrounding a failed treatment, this is one of the first questions that people ask: What is malpractice?

While an attorney who handles medical law will be the best resource to answer this question, it might help to understand a little more about the legal definition. One of the subtler points of medical malpractice cases is that they don’t apply to every failed treatment. An unfortunate fact of medical science is that it's a game of percentages. Therefore, doctors must be shown to be personally at fault for failed procedures.

The medical professional generally has to be found incompetent by the court for a successful malpractice prosecution. This might mean that they performed a treatment so poorly that it's obvious they didn't have the capacity to try. An example of this would be a dentist attempting to perform the work of a heart surgeon, or vice versa. While they're each competent at their own professions, they're incompetent at others.

Another way that doctors can be found incompetent is if they prescribe the wrong treatment. This is a complicated point of malpractice, because it has to be a treatment that no other medical professional would prescribe. If you have any questions, call Osinga Law Offices, S.C. at 262-717-9020. It's important to act as quickly as possible if you believe you have been wronged.