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Medical Malpractice

Malpractice is the negligence of a professional, and Medical Malpractice is the negligence of a doctor or of a physician.

The negligence may take place at the office of a physician or it may occur in a hospital.

Medical Negligence is the failure of a doctor to use “reasonable care” when diagnosing, treating, or caring for a patient. Hospital Negligence occurs when a doctor or employee of a hospital fails to use reasonable care in a hospital when caring for a patient, when treating a patient, when diagnosing a patient, or when performing any one of the other multiple acts that a physician or a hospital employee will do.

The key to deciding whether an act or omission by a doctor or by a hospital is medical malpractice or negligence is: deciding whether a reasonably educated and cautious physician would not do what was done, or whether there was a failure to do something that a skilled, educated, and qualified doctor would do under in the same situation.

To say it in another way, medical malpractice is medical negligence, or simply, the failure to perform a medical service with the care or skill required. Sometimes medical malpractice is explained as a “departure from accepted medical practices” or a “deviation from accepted medical practice.”

It is important to understand that a doctor who treats a patient should have the knowledge and skill that is expected of a doctor in the same specialty who performs the operation, treatment, or medical service undertaken. The doctor has to be skilled, has to know what he is doing, and must do it in a reasonably skillful, productive, and non-harmful way. Consult a Medical Malpractice Lawyer in Manhattan to further understand how you can avoid medical malpractice and medical negligence

The doctor must comply with minimum standards of care. That is, he has to care for the patient in a proper, regular, normal way for the condition the patient presents with.

It is true that different doctors have different abilities, just like people in other professions, in business, or at other jobs have different abilities. The doctor does not have to be the best doctor in the world, but he has to be at least average and certainly not below average in the way the patient is treated. He does not have to be a genius or to have extraordinary knowledge that only a few doctors have. But, he must keep informed of all new medical developments in the field, and that is true whether it involves medicine, surgery, anesthesia, obstetrics, oncology, ear nose & throat, or any other specialized area of medical practice.

Importantly, the physician must treat patients with the approved means and methods of treatment in general and accepted use.

A doctor does not guarantee a good result, and a bad result does not mean necessarily that the doctor was negligent. But if any aspect of treatment was negligent and caused substantial damage, that maybe the beginning of a valid and serious medical malpractice case.