Help For Those Who Have Suffered From Emergency Room Negligence
In a medical emergency, time is often of the essence. Even when a patient's life isn't on the line, however, medical malpractice in Nebraska due to negligence occurs more often in an emergency room than in any other medical setting.
Types of ER Accidents
Emergency room malpractice can come from a wide range of mistakes, errors, or omissions, including:
- Understaffing by the hospital in an attempt to save money
- Failure to perform a differential diagnosis, and assuming the wrong diagnosis
- Failure to take the most complete medical history
- Failure to do a thorough physical exam
- Delays in diagnosis, testing, treatment, or a failure to diagnose, test, or treat dangerous conditions
- Failure to consult specialists when needed, to fully treat a patient, or to monitor a patient properly during diagnosis, testing, or treatment
- Improper types or amounts of medication
- Using defective hospital equipment or medications
- Laboratory errors
- Surgical errors
- Patient "dumping", or discharging patients in violation of Federal Law
Consequences of Emergency Room Malpractice
A wide range of injuries can result from emergency room malpractice in Nebraska, depending on a patient's symptoms, medical history, and the types of testing or treatment used. One of the more common emergency room injuries include heart attacks and strokes caused by failure to diagnose the conditions, which can leave patients with permanent paralysis, brain damage or other conditions, or can even be fatal. Severe damage to crucial bodily organs may result from failure to diagnose a serious condition. Finally, severe injuries can result because of the hospital administrations decisions to save money and short staff in the emergency room.
Legal Assistance to Guide You Through Challenging Times
In the worst cases of emergency room negligence, a patient may even lose his or her life.
A patient who is injured by emergency room negligence may find it difficult to untangle exactly whose failure to live up to the standard of care caused or contributed to their injuries. Physicians, nurses, hospital staff, and manufacturers of defective equipment or medications may all have played a role in causing the injury or making it worse. Patients and their families can easily feel overwhelmed by all the information involved in their care. In these cases, hiring an experienced Omaha emergency room accident attorney can be invaluable in unraveling what happened and who should be held accountable.
In the worst cases of emergency room negligence, a patient may even lose his or her life, especially if the staff fails to diagnose or treat a life-threatening condition like meningitis (pictured below), a heart attack, or stroke. When a family loses a loved one to emergency room malpractice, the family may have the right to bring a wrongful death case against those whose negligence caused the loved one's death. While money cannot bring a person back to life, it can help the family cover medical bills, funeral expenses, lost wages, and other costs, so that family members can focus on healing from their loss instead of scraping to pay the bills. For more information about your legal rights and options, contact the Omaha medical malpractice attorney at Cullan & Cullan LLC by calling (402) 882-7080. We can help.
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