When you visit a medical professional, they owe a duty to reasonably treat you as any other competent physician would in the same or similar circumstances.
Doctors and other caregivers make mistakes all the time, and sometimes those mistakes can cause great harm to their patients.
In these cases, the patients may seek to gain monetary compensation for their injuries through legal action.
To this end, you can enlist the help of a medical malpractice lawyer.
What Is Medical Malpractice?
Medical malpractice in New Mexico comes in many shapes and sizes. Generally, it concerns issues that arise from medical professionals administering negligent care.
You can file a medical malpractice lawsuit against any doctor, nurse, or other medical professionals that performs or contributes to the negligent care. In short, if they treated you, they may be liable.
However, you must be able to satisfy the elements of negligence to prove your medical malpractice case, which are:
- The medical caregiver owed you a specified duty of care,
- The medical caregiver violated this duty of care,
- The medical caregiver’s violation of the duty of care contributed to your injury, and
- The medical caregiver’s actions resulted in measurable harm to you.
Medical malpractice claims require extensive proof of the duty of care owed to you by the negligent medical provider.
Medical professionals often have the resources to hire good legal counsel, and they will fight hard to prove the doctor did not violate their duty of care to you.
Your attorney will work with you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your claim, investigate the likelihood of your success, and determine how best to go about proving your claim, help youÂ
What Is Misdiagnosis?
Misdiagnosis is broadly defined as a wrong diagnosis or a failure to diagnose by a treating medical professional.
To seek compensation, you must show that the misdiagnosis caused you direct harm. You cannot have a medical malpractice claim if the misdiagnose did not have adverse effects.Â
Some examples of harm could include:
- Sustaining side effects from an unnecessary medication,
- Undergoing an unneeded procedure,
- Spending money on unnecessary medical care or care that would not have been necessary without the misdiagnosis,
- Having pain and suffering from an untreated illness, or
- Having your illness get worse before it is correctly diagnosed.
For all economic damages such as medical bills, you should have financial documents to back up the money you request.
Noneconomic damages like pain and suffering may require testimony statements and other types of proof. Hiring a lawyer is an essential step in this process of proving your case.
An experienced medical malpractice lawyer will have a plan of attack for you to get the compensation you need.
Medical Malpractice Lawyers
If you suffer from a misdiagnosis, our misdiagnosis lawyers are here to help.
Poulos & Coates has an experienced team of attorneys that have won over $300 million in gross compensation for our clients over the years.
We have unique resources, such as a medical doctor and nurse on our staff to provide their medical expertise.
Contact us today, and we will help fight for the compensation you need.