At Saffren and Weinberg, Marc Alan Weinberg, Attorney and Kenneth Scott Saffren, Attorney are partners. The firm’s tagline is “The People’s Voice In Court.” They make themselves available via phone at (215) 576-0100 or by email on the Saffren and Weinberg website. Saffren and Weinberg provides a no-charge, complimentary case review and answers questions for prospective clients.
Medical Malpractice Can Happen to Anyone
You trust your healthcare providers implicitly because you have no other choice. When these people become the reason for your grievous injuries, it is not just inhumane but an unforgivable crime. Medical malpractice is a shocking reality that is regularly being brought to our notice with the increasing number of cases being filed every year.
Generally, the victims of medical errors are adults but do you know that children and many as young as a year old or even newborns also suffer due to medical negligence? A significant number out of the 90,000 (statistics from the National Academy of Sciences) deaths that occur due to medical malpractice every year are children.
Causes of pediatric malpractice
There is nothing more devastating than watching your child suffer due to a mistake of your doctor or service provider. They are expected to provide treatment to cure your child. Their mistakes can cause serious consequences for your child it and can leave you shocked, feeling helpless and distraught.
Medical malpractice affecting children are referred to as pediatric malpractice. Medical negligence or failing to give the desired treatment to a patient will result in medical malpractice.
Today, hospitals take utmost care to prevent any such incidents but any small mistake on their part, be it in administering the right dosage or handing over the wrong prescription, can lead to irreversible health damage in a child.
Failure in proper diagnosis: The right diagnosis can help in the right treatment, but there are cases in which the doctors fail to find the cause of the sickness. Bacterial meningitis is one such condition that has been found to have aggravated in children because it was not diagnosed by doctors.
Since its symptoms are similar to flu, most doctors prescribe medicines for flu and not for the fluid accumulation in the brain. The result is that the condition aggravates leading to paralysis, brain injury and even death. If treated early, the condition can be cured.
Pediatric cancer is another condition that most often physicians fail to diagnose correctly.
Appendicitis is yet another case where misdiagnosis is commonly found. The symptoms of a child with appendicitis are similar to those of urinary tract infections and, hence the doctor may give medicines to treat infection rather than the actual cause. The result is it leads to disease progression and then could need advanced treatment, causing health complications.
Medical misdiagnosis is a commonly seen form of medical malpractice involving children.
Wrong treatment: Misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose means your child has been receiving improper treatment. This also can aggravate the little one’s condition leading to devastating effects on his/her health. Even a slight error regarding a misspelling of the medicine or a small dosage difference can lead to irreversible damage.
Medical errors: As in cases with adults, there are many errors that could lead to making your child a victim of medical malpractice. It could be a surgical error, wrong prescriptions, low or high dosage of medicine, wrong way of administering the medicine, and so on.
Birthing errors: Making mistakes while delivering the child or negligent practices during delivery can lead to birth defects in a newborn. This might cause a child to be born with a birth injury.
During the process of childbirth, the doctors have to take utmost care to ensure that any complications are treated as early as possible. If your doctor has failed in his duty, then they have the right to report and file a medical malpractice claim.
Thus, medical malpractice cases involving children are not limited to the period of hospitalization but can have occurred even before that. If you feel that your doctor or your healthcare provider has erred in the course of your delivery leading to any complications in your childbirth, you can include it as a personal injury of your child and seek legal help.
The American Academy of Pediatrics or AAP has laid down several guidelines regarding the health care of children. In case, if your child has been an unfortunate victim of malpractice at the hands of healthcare providers, then you should act immediately.
You need to ensure that your child gets proper treatment at the earliest and second, demand action against erring providers. A pediatric negligence lawyer can help you in seeking claim which can help you to provide the best for your child.
Get the Help You Need Today!
If you’ve been a victim of medical malpractice, you will require a team of seasoned lawyers by your side to bring the perpetrator to justice. The evidence and the reasoning to back your case should be airtight for you to have a chance to receive the right amount of compensation. Give our team at Saffren & Weinberg a call at 215-576-0100 or contact us online to find out how we can help you out during these troubled times.
