Have you recently been injured or made ill by your healthcare provider’s recklessness or negligence? Filing a malpractice lawsuit can help you get compensation for your medical bills and justice for the trauma of your ordeal. However, malpractice suits aren’t always slam-dunk wins.
Medical malpractice is a complex area of the law, and a successful malpractice suit is comprised of four elements you’ll need to win. Let’s look at those components one by one.
Duty of Care
The first component of a strong malpractice case is relatively straightforward. You and your attorney must prove that the defendant (your healthcare provider) owed you a certain duty of care. When you establish a doctor-patient relationship with that provider, they are legally required to provide you with the best care possible.
Breach of Duty
Next, you must provide evidence that your provider breached their duty of care by behaving recklessly or negligently. Demonstrate to the court that your doctor failed to exercise the standard of skilled care that another doctor would display in the same situation.
Common examples of a doctor breaching their duty of care include writing incorrect prescriptions, making surgical errors, or failing to diagnose a medical condition.
Direct Causation
To prove that your doctor is guilty of malpractice, you and your attorney will need to create a direct causal link between the doctor’s actions and your illness or injury. This is often the most challenging element to prove in a malpractice case because your illness or injury could have a variety of underlying causes. Many plaintiffs enlist third-party medical experts to examine them and provide testimony about their condition.
If you cannot prove that your doctor’s actions or behavior directly caused your condition, the judge could dismiss your malpractice suit, leaving you out of luck.
Damages
To win your case—and your settlement—you’ll have to prove that your ordeal resulted in compensable damages. This category includes both your physical condition and the medical bills you accrued while in the hospital.
Keep records of all medical bills you received, all doctors’ appointments you attended, and all treatments you underwent. This evidence will play a crucial role in determining the amount of your settlement.
If you want your medical malpractice lawsuit to be successful, keep these four elements in your mind as you gather evidence and talk to your attorney. The strongest malpractice cases have adequate proof of all four of these components.