Lake Forest Emergency Room Errors Lawyer

When doctors and other emergency room personnel make mistakes or otherwise fail to meet the requisite standard of care for their profession, their patients can suffer serious injuries. If you or a loved one fell victim to malpractice in a hospital ER, you should strongly consider consulting a Lake Forest emergency room errors lawyer for advice.

Determining whether medical providers were negligent in their care of a patient in a particular situation is not always easy. Fortunately, an experienced malpractice attorney could assess the facts surrounding your injuries and give you a clear evaluation of any claim that you may have related to your treatment.

Situations That May Lead to Emergency Room Mistakes in Lake Forest

In the busy atmosphere of a hospital emergency room, doctors may see dozens of patients with varying degrees of need for emergency care each shift. Medical staff often works long shifts and are pressured to work through as many patients as possible, which easily can lead to medical errors.

As such, there are a variety of situations that may lead to mistakes in the ER and cause injuries to patients, including but not limited to:

• Failure to review patient medical records, including a history of allergies or intolerance to certain medications
• Misdiagnosis or missed diagnosis due to inadequate triage procedures
• Medication errors, such as the incorrect dosage or type of medicine
• Inadequate screenings by non-physician medical personnel

In many cases, simply taking the time to go a step further—for example, by calling for a consultation with a specialist, ordering another test, or reviewing medical records—could prevent the injuries to a patient. An emergency room errors attorney in Lake Forest may be able to evaluate injuries that stemmed from emergency room care and determine whether they stemmed from a failure by a doctor to follow through with appropriate care.

Liability in Emergency Room Error Cases

Most malpractice claims, including those based on emergency room errors, are based on negligence. In order to establish a claim for negligence, injury victims must prove four separate elements: a duty of care, a breach of that duty, causation, and damages. The first element is usually implicit since doctors and other medical personnel who treat emergency room patients form doctor-patient relationships in which there is inherently a duty of care.

When the action or inaction of doctors fail to meet an acceptable standard of care or judgment that other medical professionals would exercise in the same circumstances, though, they have breached the duty of care to their patients. If that breach of duty directly causes serious injuries to a patient and results in physical damages, then the doctor or medical professionals may be liable for the costs associated with those damages.

Contact a Lake Forest Emergency Room Errors Attorney for Assistance

All too often, emergency room errors are overlooked by patients who end up receiving proper follow-up care after being admitted to the hospital for further evaluation or by their personal physicians after being discharged. However, failure to provide an acceptable standard of care to emergency room patients may result in severe injuries that necessitate expensive additional treatments and further pain and suffering.
There are strict time limits on bringing medical malpractice claims under California law. Failure to meet those deadlines can result in your claim being barred entirely, regardless of the severity of the injuries sustained. As such, seeking legal counsel from a Lake Forest emergency room errors lawyer as soon as possible could be essential to recovering any compensation to which you may be entitled. Call today to learn more.