The job of medical professionals is to improve our health condition when we’re not at 100%. The last thing you’d expect is your condition to exacerbate after putting your wellbeing in the hands of a medical professional. Sadly, these cases happen from time to time. There are certain incidents where it’s extremely difficult to determine the reason for the worsening of the situation. But in other cases, it happens due to the negligence shown by the healthcare professionals. If you ever fall victim to medical negligence, you deserve monetary compensation for the sufferings you experience.
Speaking of medical negligence, there is a profusion of cases, but misdiagnosis is among the most common ones. Misdiagnosis, put simply, is when your condition is wrongly diagnosed by the doctor, making it bad to worse.
What makes a misdiagnosis?
Every year there are hundreds and thousands of claims made against healthcare professionals and hospital management. Misdiagnosis is one of the leading reasons for these claims. What is a misdiagnosis? This happens when an illness, injury, or any medical condition isn’t properly diagnosed. The medical professionals deemed the condition as something it wasn’t or diagnosing it too late. Such mistakes made by the health care professionals lead to no or incorrect treatment or getting the treatment too late. In some cases, misdiagnosis also leads to death.
Types of misdiagnosis claims
Although there are several types of misdiagnosis claims, mostly they are grouped into three broad categories, which are:
- Wrong diagnosis: this happens when a patient has been diagnosed with an incorrect illness or condition. As a result, the patient will be prescribed the wrong medication and the wrong treatment, which is very harmful. Furthermore, the patient can also develop severe anxiety and similar mental disorders if they are told they have developed a severe condition, which they do not have. This is why psychological and brain injuries can also be claimed, separately.
- Late diagnosis: late diagnosis is too common. This happens when the medical professionals failed to diagnose. Or spot the problem at the right time and only discovered it when the time had gone too far. This means the recovery time and the survival chances of a patient are severely affected.
- Failing of diagnose at all: this happens when the medical professionals completely miss the person’s condition and do not prescribe any treatment at all. This will obviously cause their condition to deteriorate. There are several cases where people suddenly die because they had been suffering from a condition for a long time, without even knowing about it.
Major causes of misdiagnosis
There are a plethora of reasons as to why medical misdiagnosis may occur. Some of them include:
- Test results interpreted incorrectly: several times people would go to hospitals to get biopsies, x-rays, mri scans, ct scans, or smears, and there is an error in the interpretation of results.
- No supervision: the doctors and senior staff members at the hospital should always supervise and check the work of junior staff to ensure there are no mistakes and errors being made
- Negligence from the general practitioner
- Wrong tests: the doctor performing a wrong test to determine the issue
- Insufficient action: the medical professionals failed to properly investigate the symptoms of illness.
Limits on medical misdiagnosis claims
Similar to other compensation claims, there is a set limit on medical misdiagnosis claims as well. This is three years from the date of diagnosis. Most people have the habit of doing their things at the 11th hour, and they leave the claim for the last minute, which isn’t the ideal thing to do. Know that the sooner you claim, the easier it will be for you to recall all the events.
If a relative or friend of yours lost their life due to medical negligence, you can claim on their behalf, too. You can also submit a claim on the behalf of your child if they have suffered the consequences of a wrong diagnosis. However, if you don’t, your children will have three years to make a claim starting from the date of their 18th birthday.
When faced with such a situation, immediately contact professional medical negligence solicitors, who will guide you throughout the process of the case and ensure you win your deserved monetary compensation.
