The Applicable Standard of Care in Atlanta Medication Error Cases
In Georgia, medical professionals are held to the standard of a reasonable degree of care when providing medical services. That does not mean they have to be the best in their field, but rather that they must perform their job with a reasonable level of care and skill at all times.
As part of this standard of care, they must also exercise reasonable diligence when prescribing medications. Failure to do so could give rise to a malpractice case based on a medication error. If you believe that you are the victim of a medication error and it has caused you physical injury, you should contact an experienced medication error attorney to discuss whether the circumstances of your potential case constitute a violation of the applicable standard of care. With the aid of an in-house doctor, client-focused attorneys could focus on the evidence of your claim and work to build a fact-based argument utilizing cutting-edge presentation technology.
Steps Required of Atlanta Healthcare Professionals
There are many steps that healthcare professionals in Atlanta can take to avoid medication errors. For example, it is important that nurses—who are the parties most often responsible for following orders for medications in hospitals—verify several times that they have the right medications and dosages. If something seems odd or unusual, they should check with the prescribing physician(s) and confirm that the order is correct.
For their part, physicians with any questions or doubts about a medication should ensure that the dosage they are prescribing is accurate and that handwritten orders are written legibly and are correctly entered into a computer. Pharmacists, like nurses, have a responsibility to make sure that prescriptions make sense to them and, if they do not, to call the ordering physician to verify what specific order they should fill.
Finally, hospitals and pharmacies should have computer systems in place that can flag prescription errors or dosage errors to make sure that they do not progress to the point of harming a patient. All these actions fall within the standard typically set by experts who testify to what the standard of care is for medication error cases in Atlanta.
Could Multiple Professional Be Liable at the Same Time?
Due to the many steps involved in a patient receiving a prescription, it is sometimes possible for multiple healthcare providers to be held liable in one case for violating the applicable standard of care. Healthcare professionals could be found liable for making a medication error if a doctor wrote an improper dosage in an order, if a nurse did not verify a questionable order, or if a pharmacy dispensed a questionable order without verifying it.
Each of those people could be held responsible for not stopping an incorrect order for a patient, which could lead to the patient falling ill, overdosing, or even dying. In this way, Atlanta medication error cases may end up involving multiple responsible parties more often than other types of malpractice claims.
What to Do If A Doctor in Atlanta Violates the Standard of Care and Causes a Medication Error
Although medication errors are somewhat common in Atlanta due to the number of people involved in the process of getting medications to patients, the results of a medication error can still be significant. A patient not receiving the right medication for his or her condition—or having an adverse reaction to the wrong one—may have devastating consequences for them in physical, financial, and personal terms.
Once you have received proper medical treatment following a medication error, you should contact an experienced medication error attorney to determine whether the standard of care was violated in a way that would allow you to file a case in Atlanta for compensation. Call today to speak directly to an attorney who takes calls after hours and offer a free case review.
