You’ve been diagnosed with… Oh wait.

Say you’ve just been diagnosed with a serious disorder. You have undertaken every measure to alleviate the situation in accordance with your doctor’s orders, from treatment at the practice to at-home solutions. However, things apparently got worse and the nasty kicker comes during a return visit: the treatment was for a different ailment.

In this case, you may consider suing the practitioner for malpractice. Yet how can you push a misdiagnosis case to be airtight?

Justifying a Medical Malpractice Case

Unlike what's usually depicted in TV programs like the top-rating “Grey's Anatomy,” not all doctors and surgeons get it right all the time. In real life, even highly respectable health practitioners are susceptible to errors like making a wrong diagnosis or prescribing an incorrect medication. However, once the errors begin to worsen a patient's condition, the medical practitioners can face a medical malpractice lawsuit.

Medical malpractice laws, however, vary from state to state. For instance, the statute of limitations differ from one state to another, which limits the period in which claimants can file a charge. In North Carolina, a patient can file a medical malpractice lawsuit within three years from the date of injury, while in New York, a patient should bring a medical malpractice case within two and a half years from the date of injury.

Human Error Elements to Malpractice: Misdiagnosis

While the medical field demands nothing less than utmost accuracy and precision from its practitioners, human error is something that can never be completely taken out of the picture. Unfortunately, medical misdiagnosis could also be one of the most dangerous mistakes that a medical practitioner can commit.

The Role of Expert Witnesses in Malpractice Cases

Medical malpractice occurs when a doctor performs treatment that is not recognized as standard healthcare treatment (i.e. advising cancer treatment procedure from the 1950s to treat a patient in 2013). More often than not, medical malpractice cases are caused by the negligence or ignorance of a medical professional.

Most people think that the outcome of a malpractice case falls solely upon the medical malpractice attorney. However, the legal process for filing a medical malpractice lawsuit demands that the doctor (or other healthcare provider) was indeed negligent.

According to medical malpractice laws, medical negligence is present when it is determined that the doctor diagnosed or treated a patient in a way that another doctor would never have done. The only way to determine this is for a medical malpractice expert witness to testify.

A medical malpractice expert witness is often a reputable doctor from the same field as the doctor accused of medical malpractice. These witnesses are required to go through all the medical records of a patient to see if there was indeed negligence on the part of the accused doctor. After reviewing the records, the expert witness will then testify in court if there was negligence on the part of the accused doctor or not.

What Constitutes Medical Malpractice?

Doctors are often seen as authority figures. After all, they spend the better part of a decade studying for their medical degrees and training in hospitals to hone their skills. If you show them your hand, they can tell you every bone, muscle, ligament, joint and nerve that comprise it. Since they specialize in the inner workings of the human body, they are experts at treating the various ailments that afflict it.

No matter how highly patients may think of them, doctors are still human and are not infallible. In fact, there are 15,000 to 19,000 cases of medical malpractice filed each year. However, if an injection feels slightly more painful than usual, that’s not necessarily grounds for a malpractice suit. Doctors can only be charged with malpractice if they were negligent of their duties, giving substandard treatment that harms, injures or causes death to patients.

In other words, deviation from the standard quality of care must first be established before the doctor can be held legally responsible for any harm caused to a patient. In such cases, a medical malpractice expert witness can study a plaintiff’s complaint to see if there is indeed professional negligence on the part of the doctor. Often, an expert witness’s opinion is necessary before a malpractice lawsuit can be filed.