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What Are Birth Injuries and How Does Medical Negligence Play a Role? Birth injuries occur when a baby suffers harm before, during, or shortly after childbirth. While some birth injuries are unavoidable, many are caused by medical negligence —when a healthcare provider fails to meet the standard of care. According to a study in the Journal of Patient Safety, medical errors contribute to over 400,000 preventable deaths per year in the U.S. (2013). Birth injuries make up a significant portion of these cases, yet they are often overlooked. At LawMD, we know the law, and we know the medicine. Unlike other firms, most of our attorneys are also medical doctors, giving us a unique edge in handling birth injury malpractice cases. Shocking Birth Injury Statistics You Need to Know Many people underestimate how often birth injuries occur. Here are some alarming statistics: 1 in every 9,714 babies in the U.S. is born with a birth injury ( Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2019). Nearly 50% of birth injuries could be prevented with proper medical care ( American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2017). The most common causes of birth injuries include delayed C-sections, improper use of forceps, and failure to monitor fetal distress ( CDC, 2022). Brachial plexus injuries (nerve damage in the shoulder and arm) occur in 1.5 out of every 1,000 births ( National Center for Biotechnology Information, 2021). Hispanic and Black mothers are more likely to experience medical negligence during childbirth compared to white mothers ( JAMA Network Open, 2022). These statistics highlight the urgent need for accountability in medical care. Common Birth Injuries Caused by Medical Negligence When doctors and nurses fail to follow proper procedures, babies and mothers suffer. Some of the most common birth injuries linked to medical negligence include: 1. Cerebral Palsy Cerebral palsy is one of the most devastating birth injuries, affecting 1 in 345 children ( CDC, 2022). It can be caused by oxygen deprivation, which may result from delayed C-sections or improper fetal monitoring. 2. Brachial Plexus Injuries (Erb’s Palsy) This injury occurs when the baby’s shoulder is stretched too much during delivery. It leads to weakness or paralysis in the arm. Many cases are due to excessive force used by the doctor when pulling the baby out. 3. Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE) HIE is a type of brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen. Studies show that 60% of newborns with severe HIE either die or suffer permanent disabilities ( National Institutes of Health, 2021). 4. Skull Fractures and Head Trauma Improper use of forceps or vacuum extractors can cause skull fractures, brain bleeding, or long-term brain damage. These injuries are entirely preventable with proper delivery techniques. How Medical Negligence Leads to Birth Injuries Medical negligence happens when doctors or nurses fail to take the necessary precautions. Some examples include: 1. Delayed or Denied C-Sections Failure to perform a C-section in time can lead to severe birth injuries. Studies show that delayed C-sections increase the risk of brain damage by 32% ( Obstetrics & Gynecology Journal, 2018). 2. Improper Use of Delivery Tools Doctors sometimes use forceps or vacuum extractors incorrectly, which can cause skull fractures, nerve damage, and brain injuries. 3. Failure to Monitor Fetal Distress If a baby’s heart rate drops, it’s a sign of distress. Neglecting to act quickly can lead to oxygen deprivation and permanent brain damage. 4. Medication Errors Giving the wrong dosage of labor-inducing drugs like Pitocin can cause excessive contractions, leading to uterine rupture or fetal distress. The Long-Term Impact of Birth Injuries Birth injuries don’t just affect babies—they impact entire families. Some lifelong consequences include: Cognitive disabilities (learning disorders, speech problems, memory issues) Physical disabilities (paralysis, limited mobility, chronic pain) Emotional and financial strain (lifelong medical expenses, therapy, special education needs) A study by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development found that families with a child who has cerebral palsy spend an average of $1.3 million on medical care over their child’s lifetime (2020). How LawMD’s Doctor-Lawyers Can Help At LawMD, we have a unique advantage: Most of our attorneys are also medical doctors. This means we can: Analyze complex medical records with expertise Work with top medical experts to build strong cases Hold negligent doctors accountable for their mistakes Fight for maximum compensation for families Unlike other law firms, we understand both the medical and legal aspects of birth injury cases. This makes us the best choice for families seeking justice. What to Do If Your Child Suffered a Birth Injury If you suspect medical negligence caused your child’s birth injury, here’s what you should do: Request Medical Records – This will help determine if mistakes were made. Document Symptoms – Keep track of any physical or cognitive difficulties. Consult a Birth Injury Lawyer – Speak with a legal team that understands medical malpractice. File a Claim – You may be entitled to compensation for medical bills, pain, and suffering. At LawMD, we offer free consultations to review your case. You don’t pay unless we win. Get the Justice Your Family Deserves No family should have to suffer because of a doctor’s mistake. If your child was injured during childbirth due to medical negligence, LawMD is here to help. With our doctor-lawyer team, we will fight for the compensation you deserve. Contact us today for a free case evaluation.

Learn More What is Birth-Related Injury? – Birth-Related Medical Malpractice What are “Damages” in Medical Malpractice? Is Failure to Diagnose a Form of Medical Negligence? Video Transcript Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:27 What Do Birth Injuries Include? 1:26 Birth Injuries During Labor Hey, my name is Francois Blaudeau and I’m an OB/GYN doctor in Birmingham, Alabama, and also a lawyer. And I’m here to talk to you a little bit about birth injury. 0:27 What Do Birth Injuries Include? A birth injury, we really think about it in two different ways. One is injuries that kind of occur at the time that the baby’s actually born. And usually, the mechanical force-related birth injuries has to do with injuries from the application of forceps delivery or the doctor’s placing some forceps to help deliver the baby’s head. And sometimes the forceps aren’t properly applied for the application of a suction device to help the delivery of the baby. Or sometimes the mechanically different maneuvers that the doctor may do to try to assist the baby with stuff to come out. So birth injuries can occur from mechanical forces having to do right up to the point of delivery. It’s kind of rare to have a birth injury, a mechanical-related birth injury from a C-section, but occasionally you can have an issue where the baby is cut inadvertently during a C-section and suffers some type of injury related to the C-section process. 1:26 Birth Injuries During Labor The other type of birth injuries are injuries that occur during the process of labor. And those types of injuries tend to be injuries that occur to the fetus. Typically those are injuries that occur from issues with the labor itself. And that can be decreased blood flow through the placenta to the baby where the baby’s exposed to decreased blood flow. It could be bleeding that occurs during the course of labor that causes the baby to also bleed and have issues with the baby’s heart rate and blood pressure. And also relates to levels of oxygen and the baby’s receiving. And during the course of labor, if the baby doesn’t get enough oxygen, sometimes that can cause some permanent brain injury and it can cause cerebral palsy type issues. So generally speaking as doctors talk about birth injuries, we’re talking about a group of injuries that occur around labor, the active part of labor, either while the baby’s in the womb or at the point of delivery. So if you feel like during the course of your labor your baby suffered a birth injury, we can help you understand what happened. I’ll go through the records for you, and let you know whether or not we think the standard of care was met. So as physicians and lawyers, part of what we do is to help patients understand kind of what happened to them. And not every instance is a lawsuit warranted. Sometimes things just happen, it can’t be avoided. But there are sometimes where the standard of care is not followed and babies get hurt. And certainly, in those kinds of cases, we want to be here to look at and review your records and tell you whether or not we think you have a case that warrants moving forward with the lawsuit. So reach out to us, click on the website below. Thank you.

Learn More: Is Failure to Diagnose a Form of Medical Negligence? Can You Sue a Doctor for Failure to Diagnose? How To Find A Good Medical Malpractice Attorney (And How To Choose The Right One) Video Transcript Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:21 Failure to Diagnose 0:21 Failure to Diagnose What are the most common reasons for medical malpractice? Almost universally, the most common reason for medical malpractice is failure to diagnose a condition that needs prompt treatment. It might be the failure to diagnose cancer, it might be the failute to diagnose a stroke, it might be the failure to diagnose a heart attack, is very common examples. Let me use the failure to diagnose cancer for this discussion. Patients, colon cancer frequently shows itself as one of its first symptoms like blood in the stool when the patient has a bowel movement. Patient notices that of course, they recognize it’s not normal, they go to their doctor. In too many cases, that doctor does not do the appropriate examination, doesn’t take the appropriate history, doesn’t do the necessary tests. A test like that would be, first of all asking about when this blood occurred, is it bright red blood, is it black and tarry? When did it come on, how long does it last? Taking an adequate history. Many doctors just passed right over that. Many negligent doctors I should say. Failure to do an examination, any patient who presents with bright red blood in their stool, male or female, needs a rectal examination. You need to see if there’s a cancer there that you can feel because cancers of the rectum are often, you can feel them with your finger. Something as simple as that, done in the office, can establish the need for further testing and diagnosis very promptly. And it’s very important of course because the earlier the diagnosis occurs, the sooner the treatment can be instituted. And the idea of course is to catch that cancer when it’s at a highly curable stage. So delays in treatment can make a big difference. The doctor may not do the necessary testing. And if the patient is in the right age group, obviously a sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy are essential for the diagnosis as well. And it may be further studies, like a barium enema, Xrays need to be done too. Failure to do those things, do the adequate history, fair to do an adequate physical examination, test the stool for blood, do a rectal examination, do a colonoscopy, those are breaches in the standard of care. And if they delay the diagnosis by six months or a year, that cancer grows, and it can become incurable, spreading to the lymph nodes and the belly and to the liver. And the treatment is completely different, and unfortunately, the results are far less satisfactory. That’s a classic example of breach of negligence when it comes to a patient with rectal or colon cancer. There are many, many other examples. Once again, if you have any questions or you want to discuss this further, we are delighted to discuss your case with you.

Watch the below to learn more about medication errors that can occur during administering the drug and learn how errors can occur during drug administration. Learn More: Medication Errors That Can Occur During Documentation Medication Errors That Can Occur During Transcription Medication Errors That Can Occur During Prescribing and Writing Orders Video Transcript Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:32 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Administering The Drug: Drug Administration Errors 1:13 Misreading Medication Labels After the proper ordering and documentation and transcription and dispensing of a medication, it’s time for the patient or the caregiver to actually administer or give the medication, or take the medication. What could go wrong? 0:32 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Administering The Drug:  Drug Administration Errors Depending on a person’s health status, age, their visual capacity, an individual may or may not properly administer medication to themselves or have a caregiver properly administer the medication to the patient. If you can’t read or you misread what’s on the label, the patient may take too much of the medication be given too much of the medication, or too little of the medication, as the case may be. 1:13 Misreading Medication Labels If the patient or the caregiver doesn’t understand what the label on the medication container says about how to administer the medication, the medication may not be given in the proper way. If the patient or the caregiver doesn’t have an appreciation of the dose, sometimes there are abbreviations on the labels of medications, and if there’s a misunderstanding about the terminology or the meaning of abbreviations or other terms on the label of a medication container, we have the possibility that, even if they take the right dose, they may not take the correct number of doses, for example, in a 24-hour period, increasing the risk of what is known in our business as the overdose. And again, if you want to understand one more aspect, a major aspect of the prescription process, we have one more video for you that talks about how all of this process should be appropriately monitored.

Watch the video below to learn more about medication errors that can occur during dispensing. Prescription dispensing errors are, unfortunately a common occurrence in healthcare. Learn More: Medication Errors That Can Occur During Prescribing and Writing Orders Medication Errors That Can Occur During Transcription An Overview Of The Prescription Medication Process Video Transcript Timestamps 0:00 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Dispensing: Intro 0:23 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Dispensing: Dispensing Of Medication 1:14 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Dispensing: Prescription Dispensing Errors So the prescription has been ordered, it’s been properly documented, it’s been properly transcribed. So now what happens? We come to the point in the process known as dispensing. 0:23 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Dispensing: Dispensing Of Medication Here again, typically, an appropriately trained individual in the pharmacy now has to gather the medication, and acquire the actual medication, could be a pill, could be a capsule. It is the job of the pharmacist to identify the proper formulation of the prescribed medication and then place that medication into an appropriate container for actual transmission to the patient. And that is what we would call the dispensing process. Can anything go wrong in the dispensing process? 1:14 Medication Errors That Can Occur During Dispensing: Prescription Dispensing Errors Perhaps you can imagine, the possibility that the pharmacist identified the wrong formulation, the wrong pill, the wrong capsule, the wrong vile for an injectable medication. It is possible that even if the proper formulation was identified, it’s possible that the actual material that the pharmacist collected was out of date or its shelf life had been exceeded. In other words, the stability of that material in the pharmacy could no longer be guaranteed or assured to the patient. There’s also the possibility that the pharmacist grabbed the wrong dose of the medication as opposed to the wrong formulation because sometimes tablets for various drugs can come in different dosages. Five milligrams, ten milligrams, twenty milligrams, even a hundred milligrams. Sometimes ten might be mistaken for one hundred, just as an example. So, as you can see, there are possible errors that can occur in the actual dispensing process. More to come. And now, we can talk about administration of the medication, and ultimately, proper monitoring of the medication. You don’t expect any problems if you visit the pharmacy each month to pick up the exact same prescription. There is no reason to think that your prescription does not contain the right dosage. It is important to feel that you have the right medicine in your hospital. Accidents can happen. Here’s a sample of the cases LawMD can assist you with: Wrong dosage. The pharmacist does not pay enough attention to the doctor’s prescription and gives the wrong dosage. Over- or under-medicating can lead to serious and life-threatening side effects that may not be apparent immediately. Mistaken medication. While some medications may have similar names, they can be used to treat very different conditions. Patients are often sold the wrong medication because they misread the labels. Misleading instructions. For good reasons, doctors and drug companies provide drug instructions. The instructions will not only improve the drug’s effectiveness, but they will also help to reduce the chance of it being misused. Failure to give these instructions by the pharmacy could result in death. Wrong person. If there is more than one person living in the household, it is possible to accidentally give medication to another person. It can also happen among people with similar names and birthdays. Wrong warning label. Some drugs come with very specific warnings. For example, you should not operate heavy machinery while on medication. It could lead to serious injury or death if the pharmacy does not include these warnings on the prescription or speak to you about the dangers. Interacting medications. Patients may see several doctors. However, many doctors can mean different types of medication. The pharmacist may overlook the possibility that drugs could be contraindicated or inter-relate with each other. Doctors and nurses in hospitals failing to monitor. In hospitals, medication is often administered intravenously, prescription errors can also occur. You may not be able to tell if there are problems with your IV or what you are being given until it is too late. Medication Errors That Can Occur During Dispensing: Frequent Questions What should I do if I have received the wrong dosage or medication? What will it cost for me to have my case investigated by your lawyers? How much is my pharmacy case worth to me? These errors are why? Prescription errors and pharmacy errors are common. However, this does not mean you have to pay for any injuries caused by the error. Because pharmacists and nurses are often required to work non-traditional hours, fatigue can set in and cause errors. It is their job to care for patients and give them the medication they require, regardless of whether the patient is the same birthday as another client or has a similar name. What can a lawyer do if I have been given the wrong medication? To receive compensation for injuries caused by a prescription error, there are specific deadlines you must follow. Experienced attorneys in the field of pharmaceutical errors will be able to help you. Get the medical records you need to support your case Examining the circumstances of the error to determine how many times it has been committed before. Get a copy of all medical bills relating to your injury. Negotiate them down if necessary. Contacting the pharmacy to your behalf The insurance company or pharmacy will handle the claim. Using the expertise of internal experts to assess the medical issues that were caused by the error If your case is taken to trial, we will represent you to the fullest extent of the law before a jury. With your approval, we will negotiate a fair settlement for you. Information is needed if you or someone you care about has been seriously injured by a prescription error. Call LawMD’s physician attorney medication error lawyers today. Our lawyers are also doctors!

How and when do you know there’s been a delayed c-section? this is a common question our delayed c-section attorneys get all the time. Learn More: What is Birth Injury? – Birth Injury Overview What is Medical Malpractice? What are “Damages” in Medical Malpractice? Video Transcript Timestamps 0:00 Intro 0:53 LawMD’s Delayed C-Section Attorneys Specializes In 1:26 Example of a Delayed C-Section 3:24 How LawMD Does It People frequently ask me when do you know that there has been a delay in a c-section when the baby is in distress? The only way you can determine how you know about this is to go through the records. You have to go through the records very carefully, you have to know what you’re going through, you have to be able to time everything very carefully because things can happen in minutes to newborns that can be damaging for the rest of their lives. It’s important to get all the records and to spend the time doing this. Many lawyers really don’t know how to do it number one, and number two, they don’t have the time to do it. 0:53 LawMD’s Delayed C-Section Attorneys Specializes In At LawMD, we have physicians like myself who are willing to do that, to take the time, to study the records carefully. So let me give you an example of something that could cause a major problem in a baby, and really be overlooked by the obstetrical nurse or the obstetrical doctor. A baby comes in, a perfectly normal baby, and is going through labor having almost no problems at all, and the nurse is watching the baby carefully, maybe even the baby’s on a monitor. But the nurse goes out of the room and doesn’t come back for a while because she thinks everything is going perfectly well with the baby. 1:26 Example of a Delayed C-Section Suddenly the baby’s heart rate starts to drop. The mother is concerned but there’s nobody there and nobody’s watching the monitor which might be on a desk outside where the nurses congregate. This goes on for five, ten, fifteen minutes, and the heart rate stays down. At this point, the baby’s heart may not be producing enough blood to the rest of the body, including the brain. If that’s the case, then we have a major problem. Sometime after that, the heart rate comes back up and the nurses come back into the room, and they think everything’s fine. The mother may even tell the nurse, ‘look the heart rate came down, the monitor was beeping but nobody was here’. The nurse looks at it, listens to the baby’s heart rate and says ‘well no the heart rate is good right now and I think everything’s ok’. Or the nurse looks at the strip that is generated from the monitor and says to herself, ‘oh my God, I missed a fifteen-minute deceleration of the heart rate’. This is a bad thing for the baby. The nurse knows it at that point. We have to go through those records afterward to find out what happened to this baby, and those records have to be produced by the hospital if you ask for them. So this is a situation that occurs occasionally. It’s not something that happens a lot of times. Many times it’s more subtle than that. But I’m giving you that example because that’s the kind of thing that can happen and can endanger a baby’s life. It also can damage the brain and the baby can’t survive. And if the baby survives it can have brain damage for really the rest of its life. 3:24 How LawMD Does It We have to look through those records at LawMD. We have to determine whether there was something that truly breached the standard of care, and if it did, did it cause the baby’s brain damage. If it did cause the baby’s brain damage, then obviously that affects the baby’s ability to be employed, the parents’ ability to take care of that baby through the rest of their life, and it can get very, very expensive. So if you have any questions about what I’ve just talked about, please don’t hesitate to click on the box below. They will tell you how to get in touch with us. We’d be happy to talk with you about this or any other topic at LawMD.