Marietta Emergency Room Errors Lawyer
For medical staff members, emergency rooms are more often than not busy and stressful places that are sometimes understaffed with untrained employees. These factors often compound to create substandard care conditions for patients.
A Marietta emergency room errors lawyer could help you vet your legal options if you were victimized by negligent emergency room staff and personnel. Whether you were misdiagnosed or received the wrong treatment or medication, you may have a valid legal claim and should speak directly with a team of client-centered attorneys who could work to address your needs.
Types of Emergency Room Errors
Emergency room errors can occur at any moment during a patient’s stay at an emergency room. The severity of an error could range from benign to fatal, the latter of which would require assistance from an attorney if surviving family were to bring a claim against negligent parties.
Commonly, emergency room errors are the result of negligence—and in the worst cases, intentional acts—on the part of a staff member, be it a doctor, nurse, aide, or pharmacist. Most emergency room errors fall into one of the following categories:
- Failure to diagnose,
- Failure to properly manage a patient’s care,
- Failure to properly execute a patient’s care, or
- Failure to order medication for a patient.
To substantiate the extent of an error or injury, victims could work with an attorney who enlists the help of an in-house doctor. Attorneys with such a resource could provide a courtroom advantage for victims’ cases. Additionally, a Marietta emergency room errors attorney could help an injured patient receive financial compensation for his or her losses after validating the claim.
Liability, Losses, and Requirements of a Valid Claim
For a claim to be valid and stand a chance at receiving compensation, an emergency room errors case must meet several qualifications. First, it must be established that a member of the medical staff owed a duty of care to a patient and that the medical personnel breached that duty. Perhaps the staff failed to administer an emergency medication promptly or even treated the wrong patient. Both examples would constitute a breach of the duty of care.
Although a breach of duty is a serious offense, it must lead to injuries and damages for a victim to have a valid claim. For example, if the patient did not receive a stroke diagnosis and therefore, did not receive the appropriate medication, the results of that mistake could lead to the victim suffering from paralysis, immobility, or an inability to talk. If these points are substantiated by the victim’s Marietta emergency room errors lawyer, the wrongdoer may owe the victim for the damages the negligent action caused. Most importantly, unlike medical malpractice cases that take place in other healthcare settings, medical malpractice that occurs in an emergency room is subject to a higher burden of proof. Pursuant to O.C.G.A. § 51-1-29.5 the plaintiff in an emergency room errors case must establish by clear and convincing evidence that the healthcare providers were grossly negligent.
When vetting attorneys, it is important for victims to consider retaining attorneys who could use available cutting-edge courtroom technology. Any resource that allows for juries to better understand a victim’s losses could prove invaluable in either settlement talks or trial.
Marietta Emergency Room Errors Statute of Limitations
A statute of limitations is essentially a deadline for victims to file a lawsuit. If their case is not filed within this given period of time, they would likely never be able to seek the compensation for their injuries that they deserve.
O.C.G.A § 9-3-71 provides a two-year statute of limitations for patients to file a medical malpractice suit. This is two years from the date of the injury, with some exceptions. The same statute also states that under no circumstances may a victim file a lawsuit more than five years from the date that the injury occurred.
Contact a Marietta Emergency Room Errors Attorney
You do not have to suffer silently after being victimized by negligent staff in an emergency room. The sooner you contact a seasoned Marietta emergency room errors lawyer, the more successful your case could be. To learn more about what your case is worth or what the next steps should be, call today. An experienced attorney is willing to take calls after hours and speak directly with victims.
