Chicago Failure-to-Diagnose Lawyer

Diagnostic errors can occur for multiple reasons, which almost always stem from an error in judgment by a health care provider.  

Rushed Diagnosis 

Physicians often serve a high volume of patients and may not spend sufficient time with each one to assess symptoms accurately and perform the necessary testing. In their rush, they may not take the time to listen to their patients or provide a thorough analysis that would ensure a correct diagnosis. 

Miscommunication Between Providers 

Miscommunications in the medical field can lead to misdiagnosis. This can occur in the following circumstances: 

• A referring physician fails to provide complete patient information to a specialist 
• A nurse or other provider fails to document patient complaints or changes in condition 
• A doctor fails to write orders discussed with the patient 
• A doctor’s handwriting is misread or a transcription tape is incorrectly transcribed 

Personal Biases 

Although a health-care provider should be objective, conscious and unconscious biases, unfortunately, can influence a physician’s diagnostic decisions. 

Cognitive Bias 

According to a study by BMC Emergency Medicine, cognitive biases are common among doctors. A cognitive bias is a personality trait that affects how a physician processes patient information. The study found that the following types of cognitive biases most commonly resulted in diagnostic errors: 

• Overconfidence: placing too much confidence in their judgments or another physician’s
• Confirmation bias: discounting information that contradicts the physician’s initial hypothesis
• Availability bias: making care decisions based on ideas that come to mind quickly—a bias often based on previous experiences
• Anchoring bias: refusal to consider ideas other than the initial thought that came to mind, regardless of new information 

These biases may come across as a physician being stuck on an idea and unwilling to consider patient concerns. 

Gender Stereotypes 

Gender bias most often works against women and other marginalized groups, according to Medical News Today. The health care field has long been male-dominated, resulting in an underrepresentation of women in clinical studies. As a result, health problems in women may go unrecognized. 

Pain Management 

Doctors are more likely to dismiss pain complaints by women, assuming women are oversensitive. They are also more likely to diagnose a psychological cause for pain in women than in men. As a result, women are more likely than men to have serious underlying conditions that remain undiagnosed. 

Bleeding Disorders 

Women can also be the victim of false beliefs about bleeding. Abnormal bleeding may be labeled gynecological when other disorders are present.  

For example, some doctors falsely believe that only men can have hemophilia, resulting in women receiving a delayed diagnosis or not being diagnosed at all. This can result in fatal hemorrhaging.  

Other bleeding disorders that commonly go undiagnosed in women include: 

• Platelet function disorders 
• Gastrointestinal bleeding 
• Von Willebrand disease 

Autoimmune Disorders 

According to one survey, as many as 62 percent of autoimmune disease sufferers are labeled “chronic complainers” by their physicians. This disproportionately impacts women because approximately 75 percent of autoimmune disorder patients are female.  

However, men may be diagnosed more reliably than women. Though 90 percent of lupus sufferers are women, men are diagnosed more quickly after they present symptoms. 

Mental Health Disorders 

Gender stereotypes are also rampant in the mental health field, where women are more likely to receive a diagnosis of depression than men. Women are also more likely to receive psychotropic drugs.  

The disproportionate diagnosis of depression in women points to the possibility that men with depression are not properly diagnosed. It could also mean that women are being misdiagnosed with depression while other serious conditions go undiagnosed. 

Heart Disease 

Men and women experience different symptoms of heart disease or heart attacks, yet women’s symptoms are labeled as “atypical.” As a result, women with heart disease may not receive a timely diagnosis.  

Heart attacks may also go unrecognized. One study found that female heart attack victims are more likely to die when they have a male doctor.  

Racial or Ethnic Bias 

The medical field is rife with racial bias, particularly against African Americans.  

Pain Perceptions 

One of the most devastating impacts of this stems from a stereotype that Black people can tolerate more pain than white people. This leads to the dismissal of pain complaints from Black men, women, and children and creates an inability to receive necessary pain medication.  

Pain is an important diagnostic tool, and downplaying a patient’s pain can result in a missed diagnosis. 

Stereotypes 

False assumptions about African Americans can also lead to a misdiagnosis. The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine reported a story of a Black man being misdiagnosed as having suffered a drug overdose when he was suffering a stroke.  

He was unable to respond verbally but could muster the strength to request a pen, with which he wrote the correct diagnosis of “sickle cell stroke,” essentially saving his own life. 

Mental Health Misdiagnosis in Women and Children of Color 

Women of color experience a disproportionately high incidence of failure to diagnose in the mental health field. Stereotypes against Black women may cause a doctor to miss a case of depression and assume the patient is hyperirritable or an “angry Black woman,” according to Prism. 

In many cases, women and children of color experience such overt prejudice as to have their mental health symptoms regarded as character flaws or criminal behavior.  

Black children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are often forced to live without a diagnosis because some medical professionals associate these conditions with white children. 

Inexperience 

Younger, less-experienced doctors may be more likely to correctly diagnose in some cases because they are less prone to personal biases and have the most up-to-date training.  

However, they lack the knowledge that only experience can provide. This creates a double-edged sword, as younger doctors may be more likely to correctly diagnose some conditions and more likely to miss others.