Whether the nurse fails to keep doctors properly informed about the patient's condition or performs a procedure incorrectly, patients can suffer an injury due to nursing negligence. Fortunately, an attorney who specializes in nursing negligence can file medical malpractice lawsuits against nurses and their employers demonstrating duty, breach of duty, causation, and damages. All health professionals, including nurses, have a duty to provide patients with reasonable care under the circumstances. Cases of medical negligence in nursing occur when a nurse fails to meet this professional standard of medical care and, as a result, a patient is injured or killed.
These cases can also give rise to negligent supervision claims if another nurse had a duty to supervise the allegedly negligent nurse. There must be a duty to the patient. For example, the patient is owed a safe environment and the nurse has a duty to follow the doctor's orders for the patient. These duties arise from the nurse-patient relationship.
You must show that the nurse had a legal obligation to provide you with care. For example, if you have a heart attack on a bus, nurses are under no obligation to come to your aid and try to save you. But once they start administering CPR, they create the nurse-patient relationship and must provide care that matches what a competent nurse would provide. The specific duty owed to the patient has been breached, meaning that the duty has not been fulfilled.
As for the safe environment, maybe a nurse forgets to place the bed railing and the patient falls. The nurse's failure to maintain the patient's safe environment would constitute a breach of duty. You will find a breach of duty due to you when a nurse lacks the competence of a nurse. However, it can be difficult to attribute your injuries to a nurse's breach of duty.
If you get an infection in a hospital, you may not know if they didn't wash their hands or if the janitor didn't disinfect your room. Ultimately, it may not matter who was at fault, since a hospital assumes responsibility when an employee meets all four requirements. The breach of duty must have caused injuries that result in harm. The injuries that the patient suffered when he fell out of bed are the damages that can be claimed. If the patient was not injured, there is no harm.
In other words, even if the nurse made a mistake, she can only sue if she was harmed. But keep in mind that you don't need to be seriously injured to be harmed. Any bodily injury, emotional distress, or discomfort you have experienced qualifies as damage. Therefore, if you get decubitus ulcers when a nurse forgets to change it, you have damage even though the decubitus ulcers have healed.
Conversely, if your bandage doesn't change, but someone else changes it before you suffer any adverse effects, you have no legal claim. This is generally the most difficult element to prove in a medical malpractice lawsuit. There must be a direct cause and effect link between the breach of duty and the injury to comply with the fourth and last element of the four elements. The breach of duty must have caused the injury.
In the example, if the nurse hadn't left the bed with the railing down, the patient wouldn't have fallen. The nurse's breach of duty caused the injury. At the same time, if a nurse's negligence triggers a chain of events, she can still prove causation. For example, suppose a nurse doesn't monitor a patient's vital signs. As a result, the doctor does not know that the patient's blood pressure has dropped and orders that the patient be discharged.
The patient falls down the stairs after fainting due to low blood pressure. Nurse failure enters the causal chain under medical malpractice law. A New York medical malpractice attorney can analyze the four elements of nursing negligence and determine if you received reasonable care under the circumstances. Communication between doctors, nurses and patients is essential to avoid errors.
Everyone who implements the treatment plan must know the patient's condition. Communication systems and a collaborative and secure environment can reduce the risk of a nurse breaching their obligations. The fourth and final element is causality. This links nurse negligence and patient injuries. For causation to be proven, the patient must show that the nurse's breach of duty was the cause of their harm.
Many cases of nursing negligence are due to a lack of adequate nursing intervention, causing medical professionals to fail to perform their duties. appropriately. For this reason, you should consider hiring a medical malpractice attorney who can build a strong and compelling case. The legal term medical malpractice refers to the action or omission of a medical professional that deviates from accepted standard medical practice.
An attorney will seek evidence to show that these four elements of a medical malpractice case exist while seeking compensation for their client. Many people find that the most practical and affordable way to file a negligence lawsuit is to hire an attorney who specializes in medical malpractice. If you have been a victim of nursing negligence, you may be entitled to compensation for your emotional distress. To prove damages, the patient must be able to prove that the nurse's negligence was the cause of their injuries.
A doctor can fail to fulfill his duty to care for a patient in many ways, which would be a reason for a case of medical malpractice. As your medical malpractice attorney investigates your case, you may discover that many others were involved. Nursing malpractice or negligence occurs when a nurse fails to provide the expected and required level of care. However, even if you take all of these steps, there's still a chance that you're a victim of nursing negligence. Nursing negligence cases can be very complicated, especially if the state law on nursing practices is vague.
To avoid being a victim of nursing malpractice, it's essential to understand the four elements involved in this type of lawsuit.
