medical malpractice Archives | Los Angeles Personal Injury Law Blog

My pharmacist made an error and I took the wrong medication. Can I sue for my damages in Los Angeles?

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Pharmacists play an essential role in the health of their patients. They must keep track of all medications patients take in order to ensure there are no drug interactions, as well as properly filling doctors’ prescriptions. When pharmacists are negligent in their duties and a patient is harmed, the pharmacist can be held liable for injuries.

It’s been estimated that there are roughly 1.5 million preventable drug events every year. Although some of these have no long term effects on patients, many do. Many of those are attributable to errors made by pharmacists. When a pharmacist fills a prescription with the wrong medication or an incorrect dosage, that pharmacist commits malpractice.

There are a number of common types of mistakes that can be made by pharmacists. Some common pharmacy errors include dispensing the wrong medications, failing to warn of potential side effects, labeling medication incorrectly, providing incorrect dosage, and failing to take note of medications that may interact with each other.

If you have suffered an injury because of a mistake made by a pharmacist, you have legal rights. You may wish to speak to an attorney. Call the legal team at Conal Doyle Law at 310-385-0567. We can help. You may be entitled compensation for your medical expenses, time off work, and more.

My child has cerebral palsy. Can I sue my doctor?

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You may be able to sue the doctor, if a doctor’s negligence led to your child’s cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is a group of neurological disorders that are usually caused by brain abnormalities during pregnancy, the delivery, or early in a child’s development. Most children who are born with cerebral palsy do not show any symptoms until months or years later.

In many cases, the brain damage associated with cerebral palsy occurs during pregnancy or during the birth process. A doctor or nurse may delay the delivery or fail to monitor the baby for signs of fetal distress. If the oxygen supply is cut off during delivery, the baby could get cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy can also occur because of an accident, or even two or three years after a child’s birth. Cerebral palsy impacts a child’s speech, development, and coordination.

In some situations you can sue the doctor if your child has cerebral palsy. Normally you will need to prove that the doctor’s negligence led to your child’s cerebral palsy. If your child got cerebral palsy from an accident, you may be able to sue any negligent parties that caused the accident. Normally, your attorney will review your medical records and speak to eyewitnesses in order to build a case against the doctor or other negligent party.

If you are successful in your legal case, you may be able to receive compensation for your past and future medical expenses, which can amount to a great deal of money. You may also sue for your child’s pain and suffering and loss of income as a result of the disability.

If your child has cerebral palsy and you believe it is the result of negligence, call me, Conal Doyle, Los Angeles medical malpractice attorney at 310-385-0567. I can help. Call today to learn more or to schedule a free consultation.

My childbirth lasted a long time and my child was injured. What are my legal rights?

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When labor lasts longer than is healthy for the mother or child, it’s common for birth injuries to occur. In that situation, doctors must make difficult decisions about what to do next. In some cases, doctors may choose to perform an emergency c-section, administer drugs to the mother to assist with contractions, or use forceps or other devices. Fortunately, most injuries during childbirth are minor and heal quickly. However, some mothers and children are left with more serious injuries.

The majority of injuries sustained during delivery are a result of prolonged labor. In many cases, prolonged labor is evidence of a more serious complication that may prevent the delivery of the child. The contractions may not be strong enough to deliver the child. The child may be in a bad position or could be too large to fit through the birth canal. Some common complications associated with prolonged labor include a lack of oxygen, a low fetal heart rate, low blood pressure, detachment of the placenta from the uterus, and more.

In these situations, doctors must act quickly to determine the best way to safely deliver the baby that will not pose a risk of harm to the mother. Studies have shown that most injuries that result in long term health problems that occur during delivery can be prevented with proper testing and monitoring.

If you or your child was injured during childbirth, call me, Conal Doyle, Los Angeles medical malpractice attorney at 310-385-0567. My team can help ensure that you get the compensation to which you are entitled.

My brother developed a sarcoma and later died. Can I sue his doctors?

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Sarcoma is a rare form of cancer, and can be fatal. The most common form of cancer is carcinoma. Sarcoma grows in connective tissue, and sarcoma tumors typically occur in the bones, muscles, cartilage, nerves, fat, tendons or blood vessels. The two main types of sarcomas are soft tissue sarcoma and bone sarcomas.

One thing that makes sarcomas, particularly soft tissue sarcomas, so dangerous is that they can be very hard to spot. They can grow anywhere in the body. In most cases, a lump is the first sign. The lump is often painless. As the lump grows, it may press against something which can make the victim uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there are no tests that can find these tumors before they cause other symptoms. If your doctor believes you may have a sarcoma, there are a number of tests that can be done to diagnose it. Sarcomas can be treated through chemo or radiation or surgery.

If your brother died from a sarcoma, his legal options would depend on a number of factors. First, in an unusual situation he may be able to sue any person or party that was responsible for causing the sarcoma. That would be unusual, but in some rare situations sarcomas can be caused by exposure to radiation. If he worked for an employer that exposed him to radiation that employer could be held liable. The other way a party could be legally liable for his sarcoma would be if he received poor medical care. If a medical provider should have diagnosed the sarcoma and didn’t, or if he received poor care, the doctor or hospital could be liable for medical malpractice.

Call me, Conal Doyle, Los Angeles medical malpractice attorney at 310-385-0567 if you believe that someone is responsible for your loved one’s death due to medical malpractice. My team has a great deal of experience in helping clients who have been injured by a medical professional. Call today to learn more or to schedule a free consultation.

If I sign a waiver at my doctor’s office, and he or she commits malpractice, can I sue?

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Signing a waiver or a consent form does not release your doctor from liability for medical malpractice. It’s very common for doctors to ask patients who are doing to have some type of medical procedure done to sign a waiver. This is done for routine, simple procedures, or invasive medical operations.

The waivers typically say that the doctor has explained your medical problem, lists any alternate treatments available, and the procedure you have chosen. It will normally list all potential risks associated with the procedure. Signing a form like that does not waive your right to sue the doctor for medical malpractice.

If you believe your doctor committed medical malpractice, you must prove that he or she did not use the proper standard of care when performing the procedure, and that you were injured as a result. Simply proving that your procedure did not go as planned is not sufficient for providing medical malpractice. Instead, you must prove that negligence occurred.

You should speak with an experienced medical malpractice attorney if you believe that your doctor committed medical malpractice. The attorney can help examine your medical records to help determine if mistakes occurred or if the doctor failed to provide an acceptable level of care.

Call me, California medical malpractice attorney Conal Doyle of Doyle Law at 310-385-0567, if you suffered medical problems as the result of a doctor’s negligence. I will provide you with a free consultation on your case. Call to learn more.

If my surgery didn’t turn out like I wanted can I sue for medical malpractice?

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No outcomes are guaranteed for any surgery. The results of an extremely complex and risky surgery may turn out to exceed a patient’s expectations. A very common low-risk surgery may have complications and result in serious injuries or death to the patient. Your body may not have responded as expected during surgery, or complications may have arisen that a doctor could not be expected to reasonably anticipate.

However, in some cases surgeries are unsuccessful because of negligence on the part of the surgeon, the hospital, or health care professionals. Some experts estimate that hundreds of thousands of patients die annually because of negligence by health care providers.

In order to be successful in your medical malpractice case, you must show that the doctor was negligent in providing care to you, that the negligence caused your injuries, and that you suffered damages as a result of the negligence. Surgeons are required to use the same degree of skill and care that other surgeons in a similar type of specialty would use. If a surgeon fails to use that degree of skill and provides substandard care, he or she has committed malpractice.

Medical malpractice can be difficult to prove and normally requires consultation with medical experts. If you believe that your doctor or surgeon may have committed medical malpractice in California, call California medical malpractice attorney Conal Doyle of Doyle Law at 310-385-0567. He will provide you with a free consultation on your case. Call to learn more.

Spotlight on medical misdiagnosis: slippery, enduring problem

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Although the analogy to a food item might not seem immediately intuitive regarding medical error, it actually does make sense with just a brief bit of explanation.

A doctor who has long been concerned with the lingering — and, demonstrably, outsized — problem of medical misdiagnosis says that it is an element of medical error that is particularly hard to get a handle on and deal with, especially when compared to other types of medical mistakes.

Like medication errors, for instance, the source of which can often be discovered through a methodical look back at the chronology of what transpired during a patient’s visit and treatment.

“You can trace the steps and line up the holes in the Swiss cheese,” the doctor says. And in doing so, you can detect where error occurred.

Arguably, that is not as easily done where diagnostic error — a missed, delayed or flatly wrong diagnosis — is concerned. As noted in an article on that subject, cognitive-related factors are often at the heart of misdiagnosis, and they can be hard to detect.

Put another way: Diagnostic mistakes often owe to physicians’ doubts, biases, assumptions and predilections to think a certain way.

The aforementioned article mentions a number of cognitive causes that can fuel misdiagnosis. Anchoring, for example, is “locking in on diagnoses based on initial symptoms” without engaging in further analysis. Diagnosis momentum can result in wrong conclusions based on what other doctors have erroneously concluded.

An Institute of Medicine report on misdiagnosis is scheduled to be released next month. As the above article notes, many medical industry commentators believe that the IOM’s analysis and findings “will finally give the problem its due.”

Why such a problem with post-surgical breathing complications?

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The non-profit and independent organization that accredits thousands of medical facilities across the United States has expressed a concern with a common post-surgical complication called respiratory distress.

The Joint Commission’s focus upon RD is both logical and timely, given the often outsized and dire consequences that result for patients who experience this serious complication.

The chief symptom associated with RD, and one which is directly implied by its name, is breathing difficulty — often so extreme that it can result in truly catastrophic outcomes, including death.

As a recent media article discussing RD notes, the malady is especially linked to a relatively brief period following completion of a surgery, when a patient can be highly vulnerable and taking powerful pain-killing drugs.

Such drugs — particularly opioid-based medicines, can be catalysts that produce depressed breathing.

And their effect can be severe when, as pointed out in the above-cited article, more than one doctor is prescribing medications to a post-surgical patient.

That problem can be a huge concern, notes a recent study of RD, with researchers pointing to multiple sources of med prescribing being common in malpractice cases alleging respiratory depression.

Taking away those multiple prescribing sources and implementing strong RD identification and monitoring tools can drive down respiratory depression-related incidents to a negligible degree, say study authors.

Coordinating med prescribing following surgery is absolutely essential, say researchers, who note that more than one-third of the malpractice actions they scrutinized featured multiple physicians prescribing opioid-based drugs.

So, too, they note, is enhanced training for nurses who work closely with post-operative patients who might reasonably be at risk of a respiratory depression episode.

Patient infections: a top-shelf medical industry concern

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So, you are admitted to a hospital in Southern California for a surgical procedure. Your operation is a success, but with one caveat: you contract an infection that was acquired attendant to that surgery.

That’s just bad luck, right?

That hypothetical is, well, anything but fictional in the world of medicine as it is practiced in California and elsewhere across the country.

Put another way: Any reader of this blog who thinks that infections visited upon patients receiving in-facility care are a singular anomaly in the medical industry needs to reevaluate that view after being introduced to some hard empirical evidence noting otherwise.

Like this, for instance. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about four out of every 100 infection-free patients admitted to a U.S. hospital don’t remain in that salutary state while receiving in-house care.

Although quick consideration of those odds might lead to the conclusion that maybe hospital infections aren’t really such a big deal, a bit of extrapolation might temper that conclusion.

To wit: When the total number of admitted patients nationally is considered, that four-percent figure takes on a whole new meaning. According to the CDC, more than 720,000 patients suffered in-facility infections in a recent year.

And about 75,000 of them died.

Those figures understandably make medical infections a top-rung industry concern, especially because the following of strict protocols and care standards is intimately tied to a curbed infection rate.

In other words, infections are less of a problem in hospitals where negligent practices and behaviors are controlled to a comparatively high degree.

Because of a strong belief that greater focus and effort on infection control must logically yield improved results, the CDC calls infection reduction one of the “winnable battles” that medical authorities face.

There is mixed evidence regarding that assessment. A recent study shows improvement in some areas, with dismal results in others.

And, tellingly, the CDC has concluded that infection-curbing goals enunciated in a national plan enacted in 2009 have not yet been realized.