Many California residents have been to hospitals to receive medical care and may recall the vulnerability they felt when disclosing painful medical conditions and discussing their medical history. They place their trust and confidence in the medical professional in front of them, be it a doctor, surgeon, nurse or surgical assistant. As a result of this trust, they expect the person treating them will act to the best of their ability and either treat or alleviate their condition. Unfortunately this is not always the case.
Can apologies reduce medical malpractice suits?
One of the ways an injured person can come to terms with their injury is to find out how they were injured-the cause of an injury often helps people come to terms with their injury. But when California residents are injured at the hands of their caregivers, through doctors errors, they often either never find out they are the victims of medical negligence or the only way they can find out what went wrong is by suing.
Victims can suffer serious harm due to medication errors
Many of the over the counter and prescription drugs that San Diego residents must take for their medical conditions come with warning labels. Those labels generally explain what the drugs can be used for, how much of the drugs should be taken and what effects the drugs may have on the parties that take them. Pharmaceuticals can be used to treat a vast array of medical conditions and in most cases provide those who take them with much needed relief.
Surgical errors that shouldn't happen, happen frequently
San Diego residents go to their doctors and surgeons expecting the best care. Even though they understand the risks associated with various procedures as explained to them by the medical professional dealing with them and sign the waivers presented to them, they might not be informed about specific types of surgical errors that take place. Termed 'never events', they are 100 percent preventable surgical errors because they are surgical mistakes that should have never happened in the first place. However, more than 4,000 of them happen in surgery every year and cost the country more than 1.3 billion in medical malpractice lawsuits.
Proposed bill could get tougher on doctors
Medical patients can oftentimes be placed in uniquely vulnerable positions which is why it is important that they are properly protected. A bill that was recently proposed in California aims to remove probation as an option for doctors who have caused harm to patients through drug or alcohol abuse, sexual exploitation or felony-level misconduct. Doctors that fall into this category will now face the judicial process rather than the administrative disciplinary process overseen by state regulators. At the same time, the proposal would not require doctors placed on probation for other reasons to report their probation status to patients.
