Hospital and Doctor Negligence and Malpractice

Many catastrophic injuries and deaths in hospitals occur because of medical malpractice. Medical negligence often involves more than just one doctor or nurse. A number of factors may be responsible for medical negligence in hospitals, including miscommunication between doctors, nurses, and other medical staff. Other problems include surgery mistakes, anesthesia mistakes, misdiagnosis, failure to diagnose the problem, or failure to attend to a patient in a timely fashion. A patient in need of urgent care who is kept waiting too long may have a major problem turn into a severe medical condition.

Other problems involving hospital negligence include staff who are overworked, sleep deprived, or lacking the medical training to deal with a routine or emergency situation properly. An example of a recent problem with a medical professional who was lacking the proper medical training, involves the replacement nurse at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center in Oakland, who replaced one of the nurses who went on strike. This replacement nurse accidentally administered a nutritional supplement into a catheter meant for delivering medicine into the blood stream of a cancer patient, resulting in the patient's death.

Often, hospital negligence may go unnoticed as the patient enters the hospital with a problem, the doctor's negligence results in another problem, but that problem is attributed to the problem the patient came into the hospital for in the first place. The doctor may avoid taking responsibility for the negligent act committed and instead blame the negligence on the original problem, therefore saying the original problem naturally escalated and caused the ultimate outcome. An experienced medical malpractice attorney, especially one who is also a licensed medical doctor such as Dr. Bruce Fagel, will be able to examine the medical records and prove the negligent act actually caused the severe medical condition.

Another thing to consider with most hospitals is doctors are often not employees of the hospital, but rather, independent contractors. While most nurses are employees, the fact that most doctors are independent contractors, creates an additional veil of protection for the hospitals from medical malpractice lawsuits. Therefore it is important to name the doctors as defendants, as well as the hospitals in a medical malpractice or medical negligence lawsuit.