Unfortunately, it’s common for people dealing with painful physical symptoms to be told by their doctors that nothing is wrong with them. As you may have recently learned, a failure to diagnose can quickly lead to a patient suffering severe harm from a lack of proper care for their condition or from receiving the wrong care for a condition they don’t actually have.
Either way, you may have grounds to take legal action—with a respected malpractice attorney’s help—against any doctor who doesn’t diagnose you correctly because of their irresponsible failure to properly do their job. If you’ve been hurt by a doctor who didn’t notice and tell you about a serious injury or illness, speaking with a Quakertown failure to diagnose lawyer should be among your top priorities.
What Leads to Doctors Making Bad Diagnoses?
Even the most diligent and qualified medical professionals often have very busy schedules that prevent them from dedicating their full and complete attention to any single patient, and this sometimes leads to them missing signs of minor injuries or illnesses when they first present. Medical professionals are still expected to meet a standard of care with all their patients, which is based on what an equally experienced physician would’ve done under the same or similar circumstances.
Behaviors that may lead to a missed diagnosis and also may meet the criteria needed to be considered a violation of this standard of care include:
- Ignoring a patient’s complaints and saying they’re making their symptoms up
- Not making notes of all the symptoms a patient is experiencing
- Failing to order or correctly perform tests to identify or rule out specific conditions
- Not noticing symptoms during examinations
- Misreading or misplacing test results
- A lack of knowledge about a particularly rare illness
A Quakertown failure to diagnose attorney can review your unique situation and offer advice about whether the circumstances that led to you being harmed may justify a lawsuit or settlement proposal.
Building a Civil Claim over Medical Malpractice
Civil courts won’t just take your word that a doctor who failed to diagnose you properly was irresponsible enough to be considered negligent under Pennsylvania law. To hold a doctor liable for malpractice, you need to have support from at least one other medical professional who agrees—based on their own review of the evidence—that you were likely hurt directly because of a breach in the standard of care.
More specifically, you have to prove you have this support by filing a certificate of merit, and you may need to have one or more medical experts ready to testify on your behalf in court. A seasoned lawyer’s support can be vital to accomplishing all this within the strict filing deadlines set by Pennsylvania law for failure to diagnose cases in Quakertown.
Talk to a Quakertown Failure to Diagnose Attorney About Legal Options
A delay of even a few days in treating a serious injury or illness can lead to that condition getting much worse and causing lasting damage that could’ve been avoided with proper care. As serious as missed diagnoses are, successfully filing suit over one can be challenging. Working closely with a Quakertown failure to diagnose lawyer will give you a much better chance of getting paid what you deserve for your damages than you’d have pursuing your case on your own. Call Ostroff Godshall Injury and Accident Lawyers today to learn more.
