While doctors, nurses, and surgeons in emergency rooms do have to make important decisions within very short time frames, that does not mean that they are free from the consequences of negligence or poor conduct. They still have a standard of care that they need to abide by while they help patients in the emergency room.
More importantly, this standard is one which, if ever breached, a seasoned medical malpractice attorney could work with you to enforce in a court of civil law. If you were hurt because of a healthcare provider’s mistake in the ER, a DuPage County emergency room errors lawyer may be able to help you recover compensation for your losses through a personal injury lawsuit.
Overcrowding in Emergency Rooms
More and more people are using emergency rooms to get immediate treatment for their medical conditions. Unfortunately, the number of emergency rooms available to treat patients has declined in DuPage County and the rest of the United States. With more patients and fewer facilities, overcrowding has become a problem.
Emergency room doctors and other personnel also feel the pinch. Tasked with providing more people the medical care they need, and providing it immediately, doctors and nurses make more mistakes as they rush between patients. As a result, errors borne of negligence are unfortunately much more common than they should be.
Common Kinds of Emergency Room Errors
One of the most common types of errors seen in ERs is an incomplete reading of a patient’s symptoms or another misdiagnosis. With little time to talk to a patient before being called out to treat another one, doctors and nurses in emergency rooms often fail to recognize telling symptoms that should have helped them make a correct diagnosis.
Even if this emergency room error is corrected later on, a delayed diagnosis may be too late to correct, could lead to unnecessary pain and suffering, and/or could allow a medical condition to worsen to such an extent that it requires much more care and attention to cure in the long run.
Other common emergency room errors are clerical in nature. Miscommunications between rushing doctors and nurses, particularly before and after a shift change, can leave patients uncared for and tests incomplete. The end result for unwary and innocent patients can be devastating.
Compensation for Medical Mistakes in the ER
Victims of an emergency room error can suffer in a wide variety of ways. Not only could they face increased medical expenses as they recover from the injuries caused by the emergency room error, but they may also face a longer recovery time that holds them out of work.
In addition to these more tangible results of an emergency room error, victims may also experience physical pain that they would not have to experience without the mistake emergency room personnel made. With the help of a DuPage County emergency room errors lawyer, victims could file a personal injury or medical malpractice lawsuit against the hospital or the emergency room personnel that were responsible for their injuries. Reach out to a dedicated lawyer today to learn more about how a legal professional could help one recover compensation.
Contact a DuPage County Emergency Room Errors Attorney
If you or someone you love went into an emergency room in DuPage County for help and were hurt instead, talking to an attorney could be an important next step. By discussing your experience with skilled legal counsel, you could better understand your rights and see how the legal system can be a valuable option for recovering the compensation you need to recover from the mistake that you did not cause. Contact a DuPage County emergency room errors lawyer today for a consultation that can help you decide what course of action to take.