What is the Legal Definition of Medical Malpractice

According to Gary Wais, a Baltimore malpractice lawyer with Wais Law, a Baltimore malpractice law firm, Medical malpractice is a type of professional mistake that cause suffering to a patient. The mistake may result from an act of commission, (inappropriate action taken by the practitioner or omission (failure to take appropriate action). According to Gary Wais of Wais Law, a Baltimore medical malpractice attorney, the purpose of medical malpractice law is to is to provide patients with a form of recovery for the injuries that were negligently inflicted upon them by their physicians.
To win a malpractice claim you have to prove the 4 elements of a medical malpractice tort.

I Duty: You must prove that you had a ongoing patient physician relationship with your Doctor and therefore he had the responsibility to diagnosis illness and provide treatment, with a "reasonable level of skill."

II Breached: You need to prove that your physician failed to meet the normal standard of care. This finding is usually made by an expert witness, who is brought into the case by the malpractice lawyer.The expert will prove that your physician acted carelessly or negligently and did not do what a reasonable physician would have done. For example if a Doctor fails to note the rising blood level of a medication, which subsequently harms the patient, that might be considered failure to meet the normal standard of care. If your Doctor acted maliciously and deliberately sought to harm you, he may face criminal charges. More often physicians just acted very negligently and carelessly, without malicious intent.

III Injury: You must show that some type of injury incurred as a direct result of your Doctor's negligence. For example if your Doctor failed to order an EKG after you appeared in the ER with chest pain, and then after discharge you suffered severe heart damage, you could argue that your Doctor's failure to properly diagnose the heart attack caused the damage. Put in another way, you must show that if the physician had rendered treatment in another way, the injury wouldn't have occurred.

IV Damage: You must prove that damages resulted from the injury. In legal parlance, there are two types of damages.Damage is described asdirect, i.e. loss of wages, the cost of unnecessary medical treatment, the cost of additional treatment needed to correct the injury or indirect, i.e. emotional distress, physical pain or other type of suffering.

If you are considering a malpractice action, keep in mind that you are not disqualified merely because you signed a waiver before a medical procedure. You agreed to a medical procedure involving reasonable care, not one involving careless substandard treatment.