Types Of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make (A Complete Overview)
Watch the video below to learn more about the different types of failures healthcare professionals can make and the expectations and responsibilities healthcare professionals have.
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Video Transcript
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
0:23 Types of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make: Responsibilities Of Healthcare Professionals
1:32 Types of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make: Expectations Of Healthcare Professionals
3:57 Types of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make: Standard Of Care For Healthcare Professionals
Healthcare professionals have several responsibilities that go with their work, and there are many scenarios where healthcare professionals may not live up to those responsibilities.
0:23 Types of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make: Responsibilities Of Healthcare Professionals
They may fail to, for example, diagnose a condition. They may fail to treat a condition. They may fail to tell you that you shouldn’t drive when you take a particular drug or combine a particular drug exposure with drinking alcohol. Healthcare professionals may fail to obtain a proper history of mental conditions. There may be a failure to obtain a history of physical conditions, a variety of disorders. There may be a failure to account for allergies, including allergies to medications. There may be a failure to account for what’s known as a contraindicated medication, which means that if an individual’s taking one medicine, it may be a medicine that has an effect such that the medicine you’re thinking about prescribing shouldn’t be prescribed.
1:32 Types of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make: Expectations Of Healthcare Professionals
We also have situations where healthcare professionals are expected to account for what are known as contraindicated comorbidities, or conditions. The idea is that if you have a particular disorder, that condition may be one for which you should not be prescribed a particular drug.
There’s the concept of or an expectation that a healthcare professional read particular types of records. For example, healthcare professionals today are expected in the context of prescribing pain medications, to access what are known as prescription drug monitoring program databases that have been instituted by many different states. The idea is to understand whether or not a patient for whom you are considering prescribing a particular medication is already taking a similar sort of medication. There’s a record of prescriptions for that particular kind of pain medication.
There are expectations of healthcare professionals to read various types of records, and that includes healthcare records or reports from other healthcare professionals. When it comes to whether or not a particular drug should be prescribed, and how it should be prescribed, when it should be prescribed, how often it should be taken, or how much should be taken, the physician is expected to understand whether or not a particular individual has a history of liver problems or a history of kidney problems.
There’s also the concept of properly monitoring a particular patient’s condition and drugs. So the idea is that there can be a failure to monitor the individual simply by communicating with that individual, that patient, or their caregiver.
And then there’s the other type of monitoring, which has to be known as drug monitoring, where an individual patient provides a body fluid. It could be blood, it could be urine, and that body fluid is used to analyze for the presence of or the amount of a particular drug in that individual’s body fluid.
3:57 Types of Failures Healthcare Professionals Can Make: Standard Of Care For Healthcare Professionals
There’s also another type of responsibility that healthcare professionals have, and that is to comply with various operating procedures and to abide by certain rules that have to do with how patients are treated when they have a particular condition, the so-called standard of care that physicians and providers need to comply with.
There’s also the failure to understand the behavioral capabilities, the behavioral aspects of a particular patient. Some patients are more likely to be able to comply with a particular prescription regimen than other patients, and the physician is expected to understand something about that particular patient’s underlying compliance capabilities before prescribing a particular kind of medication.
Again, there are a variety of different scenarios where healthcare professionals can fail to do that which they are expected to do as healthcare professionals, and if you want to learn more about these types of shortcomings or failures on the part of healthcare professionals, please explore other aspects of the LawMD website.
You want to trust your healthcare professional to take care of you when you go to see them for diagnosis or treatment. You are often literally giving your life to the nurse or attending physician. Neglecting to diagnose or treat your condition can cause serious injury or even death. When a doctor fails to diagnose or treat you, LawMD’s medical-legal team is available to assist.
What is a Failure To Treat/Diagnose?
There are many ways that a failure to diagnose or treat a condition can happen. It is when a doctor, nurse, or other healthcare professional fails or neglects to diagnose or treat a patient’s condition. This can lead to more harm. Here are some examples of failing to diagnose/treat a condition:
- Incorrect test results can lead to an incorrect diagnosis.
- Improperly interpreting test results can lead to incorrect diagnosis and treatment.
- Failure to complete the necessary tests and procedures
- Failure to diagnose or treat a patient, often based on the inability to pay
- It is important to inform a patient about all treatment options.
- Referring a patient to a specialist is not a good idea if the patient’s medical condition calls for one.
- When the condition is urgently critical, it is not a good idea to delay diagnosis or treatment.
NOTE: These are not exhaustive and any action or omission that causes harm beyond the reasonable standard for care could be considered medical malpractice. For a FREE Consultation, contact LawMD immediately if you are unsure if medical malpractice occurred.
What can be done?
To prove that medical malpractice occurred when it was not possible to diagnose or treat patients, a plaintiff must show three things.
- At the time of failure to diagnose/treat, there was a medical relationship.
- The negligent act of a hospital, clinic, or physician
- As a result of this negligence, the patient sustained an injury, loss, or wrongful death.
Medical Relationship A medical relationship is one in which a doctor, nurse, or another healthcare professional has the responsibility of diagnosing and/or treating a patient. Medical records, medication receipts, treatment bills, and other documentation such as medical records can be used to prove that there was a medical relationship at the time the patient was not diagnosed or treated.
Negligence Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals should act within a reasonable standard. The patient must prove that the responsible party violated the standard of care or acted negligently. Expert testimony and other experts can help to determine if the responsible party acted in ways that are different from others.
Harm It is not enough to prove negligence. Patients must prove they were injured or died as a result. It could be that the patient’s condition was made worse by untimely care or that they died from incorrect or insufficient treatment.
Are you a victim of medical malpractice?
It can be hard to navigate cases where the medical professional failed to diagnose or treat the problem. Contact LawMD’s Medical-Legal team today if you or someone you care about has suffered an injury due to the negligence of a physician.
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