Malpractice in any situation can be scary, but when it happens to your children the trauma of the situation can be greatly increased. At Moraitakis & Kushel, LLP, we understand that your children are the most important thing to you and watching them suffer can be unbearable.
Malpractice can occur in the form of failure to diagnose, improper treatment, failure to warn of known risks, failure to monitor patient, medication errors, surgical errors, and anesthesia mistakes. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the most common conditions to go undiagnosed, or misdiagnosed, in children are meningitis and appendicitis.
Injuries
The results of pediatric malpractice are the worst part, and knowing that your child’s suffering could have been avoided makes it that much harder. Some of the most common injuries resulting from pediatric malpractice include:
• Brain injury
• Hemorrhaging
• Organ damage
• Bacterial infections
Special care needs to be taken by parents to identify signs of pediatric medical malpractice, especially considering children do not communicate as well as adults. Surgical errors are probably the easiest to spot and can result in both hemorrhaging and organ damage if something is accidentally cut during the procedure.
However, damage done during surgery isn’t always outwardly physical. Occasionally infections can spread or be introduced during surgery if the surgeon’s tools aren’t properly cleaned. Medication errors often result from incorrect dosage or incorrect medications entirely. This can result in unintended side effects, overdose, brain damage, and organ damage.
Sometimes injury can be caused by simply not doing anything. Assuming an illness or injury isn’t as serious as it actually is and not treating it, or believing it is something else can cause it to spread and worsen.
Appendicitis is frequently misdiagnosed in female children because it displays similar symptoms to urinary tract infections and pelvic inflammatory disease. Misdiagnosing appendicitis can allow the infection to worsen and the appendix to burst, potentially causing an abscess or sepsis.
Standard of Care
In order for any sort of malpractice claim to be worth anything something called “standard of care” must have been violated by the treating physician. When a claim of medical malpractice is filed, experts are called in on both sides to testify that the doctor did or did not act skillfully and carefully in a way that another doctor would have in the same situation.
Even if it is obvious that the doctor performed below the expected standards of their field of care, the patient cannot sue for malpractice if they did not suffer any harm. It must also be proven that the actions of the doctor led directly to injury-specific damages such as mental or physical pain, or unnecessary medical bills. It is our responsibility at Moraitakis & Kushel, LLP to prove that the physician’s negligence resulted in your child’s pain.
Contact Moraitakis & Kushel, LLP
If you wish to pursue pediatric medical malpractice litigation, contact Moraitakis & Kushel, LLP at 404-261-0016, or fill out our online contact form.
