If you are wondering about reasons to sue a doctor, then read our list of most common causes of malpractice suits against physicians.
Today, we cannot imagine the world without doctors. They are present in our lives from the moment we are born and they spend their career trying to save people from various diseases. We are used to going to the hospital every time something happens, and we rely on the doctor’s help to ease our pain. But how often do we think about how doctors feel? Being a physician is a highly stressful and very demanding job that brings many difficulties along. Not to mention years and years of studying to become a doctor in the first place.
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Apart from all the things mentioned above, doctors must deal with more than that. Malpractice suits are more often than we think and more or less every doctor experiences a malpractice suit at least once in their career. According to a Medscape report from 2015, 64% of physicians experience at least one malpractice suit by the age of 54, and Medical Malpractice Center in the United States states that there are between 15,000-19,000 suits against doctors per year. Medical negligence is the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States and 195,000 patients die each year due to preventable diseases. These are some pretty serious numbers, but what does malpractice suit include, you wonder?
Medical malpractice involves a medical error which can be related to treatment, diagnosis, health management, etc. According to Medical News Today, medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare professional neglects to provide appropriate treatment, doesn’t take an appropriate action or causes harm or injury due to a substandard treatment. Mistakes are always possible even if the doctor has taken all necessary actions because there are risks involved in every medical situation. At times these mistakes are accidental as the doctor tried to make the best decision based on his experience and knowledge. But very often they are considered negligence. If you are interested in knowing more about medical specialties that get sued the most, then read our list of 10 Worst Medical Specialties with Highest Malpractice Rates.
There are a number of things or factors that must be involved in order for a medical practice to be considered as malpractice. Those factors include failure to provide proper care, an injury that is a result of negligence, and that has damaging consequences such as disability, hardship, etc. In order to determine the most common causes of medical malpractice, we sought help from Medscape as they surveyed about 4,000 physicians in 2015, in order to find out more about reasons why doctors get sued the most, and Center For Disease Control and Prevention. Check out our list of most common causes of malpractice suits against physicians.
