You might be admitted to the hospital so that you can receive the proper care for your injury or illness. So what you might least expect is to incur further injuries at the hands of hospital staff. But unfortunately, cases such as this occur thousands of times each year.聽Read on to discover how you might get injured in a hospital and how a seasoned New York City hospital negligence attorney at Mark L. Bodner, P.C. can assist you in your healing journey.
In what ways might I get injured in a hospital?
Doctors, nurses, and hospital staff must dedicatedly practice at the standard of care established by their peers. Even slightly falling short of this standard means that they are practicing negligently. This further means that you may be made the victim of further injuries, or even a more severe state of illness. With that being said, below are examples of how you might get injured during your hospital stay:
- A doctor may prescribe an unsafe medication or otherwise the wrong dosage of medication to you.
- A doctor may fail to properly detect and diagnose your illness.
- A nurse may fail to properly detect and treat your post-surgical infections.
- A nurse may misread the doctor’s orders and administer the wrong type of care to you.
- A surgeon may operate on the wrong part of your body.
- A surgeon may leave surgical instruments or sponges in your body during surgery.
- An anesthesiologist may misjudge the dosage of anesthesia to administer during your surgery.
- A radiologist may fail to search beyond the first abnormality that was discovered in your body.
What should I do immediately after incurring an injury?
Your health comes first and foremost; so you must transfer to a different hospital to receive the proper care. Once you are back on track on your road to recovery, then you may weigh the possibility of taking legal action against the negligent doctor, nurse, or hospital staff member. Rest assured, you have a concrete medical malpractice claim if you can prove that the doctor, nurse, or hospital staff member owed you a duty of care; and that they ultimately breached this duty of care by practicing carelessly and causing you further harm.
While you want to allow yourself enough time to recover your health, you must keep in mind the statute of limitations for your legal action. That is, you may only have 2.5 years from the date on which your medical malpractice incident occurred.
This is all to say that you must be proactive in pursuing your medical malpractice claim. This starts with retaining the services of a competent New York City medical malpractice attorney. Contact Mark L. Bodner, P.C. today.