Tennessee Injury Lawyer BlogEach year, many people experience undue suffering and pain because of medical malpractice. When a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional fails to exercise the appropriate amount of preparation and caution during a medical procedure or course of treatment, they put patients at risk for a variety of negative outcomes. In order to define medical malpractice, law makers and qualified attorneys have outlined a number of examples of medical malpractice. These examples can help you to know if you have been a victim of negligence and substandard service at the hands of a medical professional.
Diagnostic Malpractice
When a patient experiences diagnostic malpractice, it means that their doctor has failed to diagnose—or has delayed diagnosis of misdiagnosed—a serious, possibly life threatening, condition. This can result in unnecessary pain and suffering for a patient because the diagnostic error prevented them from gaining access to all available treatments. In cases of diagnostic malpractice, the patient would have been able to receive earlier treatments, or opted for different courses of treatment, that may have improved their health and prolonged their lives if the error had not occurred.