Medical Malpractice

At Karlin, Fleisher & Falkenberg, LLC in Chicago, Illinois, our personal injury and wrongful death attorneys handle cases of medical malpractice involving negligence, incompetence or other misconduct on the part of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals. Medical malpractice can cause serious injury and even death, but it also shakes our faith in a system we trust with the life and health of ourselves and our families. An injury caused by an incompetent or negligent doctor may be healed, but the damage to our faith and trust by a breach of professional duty may never be fully repaired.

Causes and Types of Medical Malpractice

Medical malpractice can cause the most serious injuries. A botched surgery or other procedure near the spine can injure the spinal cord, causing permanent paralysis such as paraplegia or quadriplegia. A patient who is not properly monitored while under anesthesia could wind up with severe and irreversible brain damage. Internal bleeding and other life-threatening complications can arise from negligent or incompetent treatment. And of course any condition that is left untreated or treated improperly will most likely only worsen.

Medical malpractice can occur in many ways. Some of the most common instances of medical malpractice include:

• Failure to diagnose
• Misdiagnosis
• Failure to treat
• Improper treatment
• Continuing a course of treatment found to be ineffective
• Performing the wrong surgery on a patient
• Performing surgery on the wrong side/part of the body
• Leaving a foreign object (clamps, sponges) in the body after surgery
• Misreading a patient's chart
• Birth injuries
• Prescribing the wrong medication
• Administering the wrong medication
• Failure to obtain informed consent before treating

Professional Liability in the Medical Field

Medical malpractice can be committed by other health care professionals besides doctors. Nurses, lab technicians, radiologists, dentists, and pharmacists can all be responsible for causing injuries when their performance falls below the expected level of competence and care for their profession. Hospitals can be liable for negligently hiring or supervising their employees, or for failing to have proper procedures in place to prevent mistakes such as the wrong medicine being administered or mixing up one patient's chart with another. Even HMOs may be liable when they disallow important diagnostic tests or necessary treatment which in turn cause ill effects in their insured.

Medical Malpractice Defenses

Doctors and their insurance company lawyers put up many defenses to claims of medical malpractice, many of which try to shift the blame onto the plaintiff. They may claim that you did not fully disclose your medical history or report your condition or complications early enough to be fixed, or that you did not properly follow doctor's orders. Successfully litigating these cases requires a depth of knowledge and familiarity with medical cases to be able to refute these claims while placing the blame where it truly lies.

Another shield that doctors hide behind is the doctrine of informed consent. No treatment, procedure or surgery is risk-free, and some courses of treatment are riskier than others. It is a doctor's duty to inform you of the risks of a given course of treatment, including side effects and all possible or likely complications. Doctors are expected to obtain your consent to treat after explaining these risks to you, and in fact it is a breach of the duty of care in many instances to treat you without first obtaining this informed consent. However, one thing we never consent to is being treated with negligence or incompetence. If an injury occurs because the doctor's conduct fell below the proper standard of care, even if the injury was a foreseeable complication of the procedure, we should expect the doctor to be liable for the damages caused.

Complicated Cases

Medical malpractice cases are among the most complicated personal injury cases for a variety of reasons. The deadline within which to file a case can differ depending upon when the injury occurred and when it was actually discovered or should have been discovered. Some injuries are not immediately apparent, making these statute of limitations questions more difficult than in ordinary cases. Also, expert medical testimony is almost always required to establish what the proper standard of care was and determine whether that standard was violated. The attorney must be able to elicit this information from a qualified expert and make sure these facts are communicated to the jury in everyday language, regardless of the complexity of the medical issues in the case. When seeking to hold a hospital liable for the negligence of its employees, the question often arises whether a doctor who has privileges to admit patients or perform surgeries or procedures at a particular facility is truly an employee or not.

These are just some of the many complicated issues which take a medical malpractice claim out of the realm of ordinary personal injury and wrongful death cases. We are not just personal injury lawyers who take the occasional medical malpractice case. Medical malpractice is one of the primary areas of our practice, and we have obtained several verdicts and settlements, many in excess of one million dollars, on behalf of our clients who were wronged by the doctors and medical professional to whom they entrusted their care. If you believe you have been injured because of the negligence or incompetence of a doctor, nurse, hospital or other health care professional in the Chicago area, contact Karlin, Fleisher & Falkenberg, LLC for a free consultation.