If you have recently been a patient at a hospital or nursing home, you might want to check with your pharmacist before you start a new medication. Every year, hundreds of thousands of patients experience potentially fatal overdoses from wrongly prescribed medications. Doctors might mistake one medication for another or a pharmacist might accidentally fill a prescription at a stronger dose.
Patients should consult with their pharmacist before changing medications. Show the pharmacist the pill: is it the right one? Should it be taken with food? Can I drive after taking this medication? Wrongful death lawyers field thousands of requests for representation every year, and recent studies estimated that as many as 300,000 people are injured by medication every month.
What should you do in the event of a wrongful death? It is important to contact a wrongful death lawyer and to provide as much evidence as possible: lawyers can work with family members to put together a case for wrongful death. Wrongful death is actually a civil case, and the statute of limitation could vary from state to state. In addition to errors with medication, there are thousands of patients who are injured by anesthesiology.
People who are licensed to anesthetize patients have to obtain an advanced degree, the medical equivalent of a Master’s degree, in order to be certified to work with patients. Anesthesiology is such a precise field that even a small error can significantly affect a patient’s health. Errors in the administration of anesthesia can leave patients with brain damage or other injury: consulting a wrongful death lawyer is essential in serious cases that involve anesthesia.
If your case requires a personal injury lawyer or a slip and fall lawyer, look for law firms that have a good track record of success in court. In general, an accident attorney can help their clients take their case to court, but cases can often be settled out of court. The average amount of damages is about $50,000, but a personal injury law firm will let you know if you should pursue the case in court or accept settlement. Most personal injury and medical malpractice cases settle out of court.
In the event that you suspect wrongful death from a hospital or nursing home, contact a wrongful death lawyer and talk to them about your case. There are thousands of instances of medical malpractice every month: doctors say that they are forced to work long hours without rest, but the blame does not always rest on the scheduling department. There are doctors who write prescriptions for the wrong medication, and although the error may be completely accidental, the consequences for the patient are very real. Some medications sound very much like one another: if a nurse or doctor is unsure as to what they are prescribing their patients, they should not dispense the medication until they consult their computer database.
One recent wrongful death case involved a patient at a nursing home who was on a ventilator. When the housekeeping staff came in to clean the patient’s room, they noticed that the patient’s ventilator was sitting on top of the oxygen tube that ran to the patient’s mouth and nose. If housekeeping staff had chosen to skip that room, the patient would have died from a lack of oxygen. Medical staff may be extremely busy, but in their field there is not much “wiggle room” to make elementary, neglectful mistakes. Doctors who are too tired to provide care should be taken off duty, rather than risk overdosing patients by accident.
If you suspect that your friend or family member suffered a wrongful death at the hands of a hospital or nursing home, contact your local law firm and they help you figure out the steps that you should take next. Medical error is lamentable, but it is also avoidable. Take the steps necessary to protect vulnerable patients from physician error.