When St. Louis residents think of their neighboring city of Florissant, many think of the annual events that the welcoming city loves to host. Florissant Old Town hosts a Pancake Breakfast in February, Valley of Flowers Festival in May, Fall Festival in October, and a Christmas Festival in December. For every season, the city welcomes thousands of St. Louis residents and visitors to experience the older city’s heritage and contemporary neighborly feel of the community. Every season brings something to celebrate.
When a loved one is struck with illness or injury, missing out on a family tradition can be disheartening. While half of your family may be able to attend the Valley of Flowers Festival, the other half may have to stay home to care for sick ones. In some cases, the entire family must put these fun traditions on the back burner because of sickness in the family and financial problems stemming from the illness.
When you or a loved one falls ill or has an injury, it is your first instinct to go to a health care provider that is knowledgeable in the field and will know the best options for you. There are over 10,000, medical professionals in the state that are qualified and certified to take care of residents when they are ill, according to the Data Bank of National Practitioners. Whether it is a broken arm, bad case of the flu, or a rising bump on a lymph node or breast, you trust that your local health care providers will understand the urgency and do everything possible to help your loved one to fully heal.
It can be catastrophic to know that your loved one wasn’t given the proper care that he or she deserved. Doctors and medical professionals take an oath to be ethical and provide their patients with the best possible care, but sometimes they fall short. Maybe they were having a bad day and went through routine checkups too quickly. Instead of taking your loved one to get more tests done, they assured you that everything was fine. Instead of being trustworthy and helpful, they were negligent and created a disaster.
During any medical exam or care, there are a number of times that a professional can be negligent. A health care professional may misdiagnose an injury or illness, or diagnose it too late; this is commonly seen with serious illnesses. A young woman may come in for stomach aches and be diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, when what she really has is colon cancer. By the time the doctor properly diagnoses her, her cancer has advanced to stage 4 and limited her time left to live.
Unfortunately, some instances of medical malpractice affect newborn babies. Improper fetal care and information can make a pregnancy go awry, leaving the family with a horrible birthing experience, lasting health conditions, and even wrongful death.
Medication or prescription errors can wrongfully affect your loved one too. Sadly, hundreds of thousands of Americans are harmed by improper medication every year. A doctor may prescribe the wrong amount of medication, a nurse may not give you the correct dosage, or the administrating equipment used in procedures may be defective.
This also includes anesthesia dosages. If you or a loved one is in need of surgery or of having tests done under anesthesia, it is absolutely essential that your anesthesia dosage is correct; just a slight error in the dosage can lead to permanent brain injury or wrongful death.
Anesthesia and surgical errors can also be considered negligent. Surgery can be an intricate and lengthy procedure. When doctors, nurses, and specialists are removing a faulty organ or cancerous tumors, fixing a herniated disk, or placing pins in the body, every step should be handled with precision and the highest standards of care. If not, you or your loved one may be left with permanent damage or worse, they may not walk out of their operating room.
When everything goes awry, the trust of your medical professionals in Florissant will disintegrate and you may not know who to turn to moving forward. You may never want to set foot in Christian Hospital again, and you may have reason not to.
However, it is necessary that you understand that unpredicted complications arise even when the doctors and professionals have done all that they could. You have to understand the basic fundamentals of medical malpractice claims to determine if you legitimately have a medical malpractice case on your hands.
An experienced medical malpractice attorney will be able to walk you through the requirements. There are four main requirements for a medical malpractice claim. The first one is that there was a doctor-patient relationship. This means that you must have paid for the doctor to examine you and make the best choices for your diagnosis and treatment.
Second, there must be proof that the doctor was negligent. Unpredicted outcomes can happen without negligence; a surgery incision can become infected or a prescription may react poorly with your body. A medical professional’s care must be reasonable and careful, but not perfect Negligence occurs when the doctor or other medical professional performed substandard services compared to that of another medical professional in the same situation.
The negligent act must have created some other injury to you or your loved resulting from treatment for the original condition for which you sought medical care. For example, a wrong prescription dose may have created serious negative long-term effects, or a surgery may have led to further surgeries and complications. There has to be a cause and effect – an originating injury and then further damage caused by it’s treatment.
Damages can include more pain and suffering, medical expenses, time away from work, and emotional distress on you, your loved ones, and your family.
The lawyers at Finney Law Office, LLC know that medical malpractice is difficult to understand, especially when you are trying to focus on healing, on your loved one, and your family. Our attorneys are compassionate, understanding, and will slowly guide you through the legal process to ensure that you know exactly what is going to happen next. After the mistrust you have for medical professionals, we want to ensure that you feel worthy and respected.
The attorneys work diligently to provide St. Louis residents with their best possible outcome, including compensation. You can see successful results in medical malpractice claims on their results page.
Medical malpractice can disrupt your life in Florissant, Missouri in many ways. By filing for a medical malpractice claim, you can start to rebuild your family emotionally and financially. You may be able to go to your favorite Florissant seasonal festivals and forget that you ever had to take the year off to heal from a medical malpractice injury.
To discuss your medical malpractice concerns, contact the experienced lawyers at Finney Law Office, LLC today.
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