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Every year, many people get an improper cancer diagnosis that either misses this disease or does not properly identify it. This situation can cause a disease to worsen and spread rampantly or trigger real emotional suffering in many individuals. Thankfully, good injury attorneys can help here by providing you with the legal assistance necessary to improve your chances of winning these types of cases.
Improper Diagnosis May Be Malpractice
All doctors make mistakes from time to time, but an improper diagnosis is usually the worst kind that they can make. For example, missing a cancer tumor may cause this disease to progress and threaten a person’s life. This action could likely be pursued in a malpractice lawsuit depending on the situation and the various circumstances that surround the case and how much it affected a person’s health.
Typically, this type of negligence is considered malpractice if the person who committed or caused the misdiagnosis was a medical professional, like a doctor. And it also counts as malpractice if the person who committed the act should have had the necessary skills and training to avoid this type of negligence. However, the full elements that define malpractice are a bit more complex than these points.
Pursuing a Malpractice Case
Trying to pursue a malpractice case for a misdiagnosed cancer case requires proving a few different elements. These factors are typically common throughout the country and give individuals the best chance of overcoming serious emotional troubles. The elements that you need to prove in this type of case include:
- A Duty Was Owed – It is important to prove that the person who performed the misdiagnosis owed a duty of protection to the patient. If that individual was their attending doctor, then it is usually as simple as proving this fact to show that a duty was owed between the two parties.
- That Duty Was Breached – A breach of duty indicates that the medical professional did not provide the level of protection and safety required to their patient. For instance, a misdiagnosis that leads to improper treatment is easily a breach of duty by these legal standards.
- The Breach Was Foreseeable – Here’s where a malpractice case gets tricky. You need to prove that the mistake made by the attending physician was foreseeable. In other words, it was a mistake that a well-trained doctor should have seen and would not have made if properly managed.
- Injuries Were Caused By the Breach – A simple misdiagnosis or breach of duty is not enough for a successful malpractice case. It must be shown that an injury occurred as a result of this breach, one that threatened the health or even the life of the person who suffered this misdiagnosis.
Injuries can include a variety of physical health issues that developed as a result of the misdiagnosis. For instance, if a doctor missed an obvious cancer diagnosis and tumors worsened to the point where surgery was impossible and an individual suffered, the worsening of this condition and the pain that they experienced is proof enough that the misdiagnosis was malpractice.
Don’t forget that emotional suffering also counts in this situation. So even if a person’s misdiagnosis of cancer was caught and treated before their life was at risk, this situation may cause great emotional suffering, agitation, and even depression. These issues can all be used in a malpractice situation, provided that it can be proved that they are caused by a poor diagnosis.
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