Maryland Medical Malpractice Attorneys

Helping Victims Recover Compensation After Medical Errors

Doctors and healthcare providers go through years of schooling and extensive training to be able to work competently in their field. People justifiably rely on physicians, surgeons, and other medical staff to provide the best care possible to keep them healthy. However, situations sometimes occur where a patient is injured because of negligence on the part of someone in the medical community. In such instances, the negligent individual who caused the injury can be held responsible for their actions in a court of law in a Maryland medical malpractice lawsuit.

If you believe that you have suffered an injury because of the negligence of a medical professional, it’s critical that you speak to an experienced Maryland medical malpractice lawyer as soon as you can. At Alpert Schreyer, LLC, we are committed to helping the victims of medical malpractice recover compensation for all of their losses. We will review the facts of your case for free and will never collect legal fees unless we successfully recover compensation on your behalf.

Put Our Firm Experience On Your Side

• Top 100 Verdicts for Medical Malpractice in the United States in 2020
• Tens of Millions of Dollars Recovered for Clients in Medical Malpractice Matters
• One of the Top 40 Under 40 Medical Malpractice Lawyers in Maryland
• Successful Verdicts and Settlements in Medical Malpractice Matters across Maryland, including:
  • Prince George’s County
  • Baltimore City
  • Baltimore County
  • Carroll County
  • Montgomery County
  • St. Mary’s County
  • Washington County

To schedule your free case evaluation with a medical malpractice attorney in Maryland, call our office today at (301) 812-4777 or contact us online.

How Is Medical Malpractice Defined?

Any situation in which professional negligence or fraudulent behavior by a health care professional harms a patient – physically, emotionally, or financially – constitutes medical malpractice. It’s not just doctors who can be hit with malpractice suits: all licensed medical professionals, including chiropractors and physical therapists, are required to purchase malpractice insurance.

Negligence is key

In defining malpractice, the concept of negligence is important. Essentially, negligence is a failure to do one’s due diligence in treating a patient or when making a diagnosis. When a medical professional act irresponsibly, he or she can be sued for damages.

• For example, if a doctor makes a wildly incorrect diagnosis and then fails to fulfill his or her legal duty to perform a high standard of care as detailed in the Hippocratic oath, resulting in a patient’s injury or death, that doctor may face a malpractice suit.

Negligence can be tricky to pin down in some situations because, in medicine, risks are constantly being weighed against potential benefits. The Hippocratic oath requires that healthcare professionals do no harm, but sometimes they must perform procedures that put patients at risk.

• For example, when a doctor performs necessary surgery on a patient and saves the patient’s life, the doctor was upholding the standard of care. But if the surgery was the result of a misdiagnosis, the doctor did more harm than good.

From negligence to lawsuit

As mentioned before, a misdiagnosis can be grounds for a malpractice case. When there is a misdiagnosis, a patient can only initiate a malpractice suit when he or she bears adverse consequences through physical damage.

• For example, a patient who needlessly undergoes surgery will suffer physical harm and probably emotional trauma as well as lost wages. That patient has the trifecta of reasons to sue for malpractice and may be able to recover some of what was lost if able to prove that the doctor’s negligent actions directly led to his or her hardships.

A suit is warranted if the misdiagnosis arose from a doctor’s failure to adhere to the code of conduct, negligent actions, or obvious wrongdoing caused by laziness or incompetence. It is not warranted if the misdiagnosis was caused by a language barrier, faulty medical equipment, the patient’s concealment of important information about his or her condition, or a situation where some of the patient’s symptoms did not match the diagnosis.

Common Examples of Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice occurs when a healthcare professional fails to use the degree of care that would be used by another reasonable healthcare professional with the same training and experience. This means that not every mistake made by a healthcare provider is medical malpractice. The question is whether a reasonable healthcare professional with similar experience or training could have made the same mistake.

There are a number of different circumstances where a patient can suffer injury, illness, or death due to medical malpractice. For example, a doctor may perform a surgery on a patient that would otherwise be considered a routine procedure, but could accidentally leave a surgical tool inside the patient, causing additional pain and suffering once the procedure is completed. Another example is the misdiagnosis of a condition or the failure to diagnose a condition, both of which can potentially lead to serious illness or even death.

A fairly simple example of a mistake that is often not malpractice is when a physician fails to diagnose a medical condition that presents a lot like another, more common medical condition. So long as the doctor performed the right tests and came to a reasonable conclusion, it’s unlikely that medical malpractice occurred, even if he or she came to the wrong conclusion.

It’s important to understand, however, that there are cases where misdiagnosis of a medical condition is medical malpractice. For example, if a patient presented with a set of symptoms that would lead another physician to order certain tests to rule out a diagnosis but your physician didn’t, it’s possible that medical malpractice occurred. For this reason, it’s always important to have an attorney review the facts of your case after a medical mistake.

Here are some examples of medical errors that commonly rise to the level of actionable malpractice:

• Surgical errors: When you go under the knife, you are putting your life in the hands of the medical team that is performing your surgery. While not every surgery can go off without a hitch, there are certain errors that should never happen during a surgical procedure. These include leaving surgical instruments or sponges inside of patient’s bodies, operating on the wrong limb, breaking sterile technique, performing the wrong procedure, and operating on the wrong patient.
• Birth injuries: Many birth injuries are the result of medical malpractice that happens during pregnancy, labor, or delivery. In the most serious cases, the birth injuries caused by medical malpractice can leave victims with lifelong problems, such as those caused by conditions like cerebral palsy. Examples of medical malpractice that can lead to serious birth injuries include failure to diagnose medical conditions in the mother, failure to monitor fetal vital signs, misuse of forceps or vacuum tubes, and failure to order a cesarean section in a timely manner.
• Medication errors: Medication errors are another type of medical malpractice that can result in serious injury to patients. Common examples of medication errors include prescribing or administering the wrong medication, prescribing or administering the wrong dosage, administering medication to the wrong patient, or failing to check for contraindications prior to prescribing or administering medication.