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When medical malpractice occurs near Annapolis, lawyers almost always intervene. Patients count on their physicians, hospitals, nurses, and pharmacists to provide reliable health care. When a healthcare provider fails to adhere to the standard of care and that medical malpractice causes an injury, the provider must be held accountable. If you are hurt by your physician’s error or failure to act, contact an attorney to discuss the facts of your case. Continue reading to learn more about how to recognize health care mistakes, including diagnostic inaccuracies, surgery mistakes, and medication errors.

Diagnostic Inaccuracies

A medical malpractice attorney often counsels patients who have been harmed by a physician’s misdiagnosis or delayed diagnosis. When a doctor incorrectly diagnoses a condition or fails to diagnose a serious illness for some time, the patient can miss essential treatment opportunities. With this kind of medical malpractice, injury results when a patient’s symptoms worsen. In some cases, failure to diagnose a major medical condition can lead to death.

Surgery Mistakes

Lawyers also handle medical malpractice cases in which a surgeon’s mistake seriously harms a patient. While accidents can happen, errors during surgery can be life-threatening. Common surgical mistakes include operating on the wrong part of the body, using the incorrect kind of blood for a transfusion, leaving surgical instruments in the body, or even operating on the wrong patient. An injury resulting from a surgical error can be devastating and have a lifelong impact on a patient’s physical and psychological well-being.

Medication Errors

Medication mistakes can be made by a pharmacist or physician. For example, a doctor may prescribe the wrong amount of a medication or could prescribe the wrong medicine altogether. Unfortunately, when it comes to prescription drugs, being a single decimal point off can cause serious injury. Pharmacists may also fill the incorrect medication or misread a prescription and give a patient the wrong amount of medicine. For serious illnesses like cancer, the consequences of medication errors can be fatal.