How Do I Know if I Have a Medical Malpractice Case?

Medical malpractice goes beyond a doctor or other medical professional merely making a mistake: while many patients will have the unfortunate experience of their health care professionals making a mistake, not all of these mistakes are of a serious enough degree to be considered medical malpractice. In order for a medical mistake to rise to the level of medical malpractice, the health care professional involved must have acted negligently. In order to bring a medical malpractice action, the doctor, facility, or other medical professional must not only make a mistake through a negligent action, the mistake must cause injury to either the patient or their family member.

Negligence itself, in a theoretical sense, is determined in light of what a reasonably prudent medical professional would have done in the same set of circumstances. When determining how a particular action by a medical professional in a medical malpractice suit will be judged, first the court must look at what the standard of care that the professional will be held to. That standard of care is what procedures, methods, and actions would be used by other medical professionals treating a person with the same injuries or under the same or similar circumstance in the same place that the treatment occurred. As an example, in the case of a 30 year old working professional with diabetes living in Cook County, the standard of care their doctor or nurse must use is the standard other doctors in Cook County or the greater Chicago area would use in treating a 30 year old with diabetes.