QUESTION
Should I pursue legal action?
Asked on Aug 31st, 2015 on Medical Malpractice - North Carolina
More details to this question:
I have been having the exact same medical symptoms since December of 2014. I have been to the same ER, and my physicians office multiple times EACH, all with the same symptoms,and I told them the symptoms, almost verbatim, at each visit. Both my physician and the ER sent me home with a prescription of antibiotics and other medications, all of these visits (visits to the ER and physician span from dec.2014-aug.2015) to treat infection. Now at the end of August 2015, I was hospitalized for the same symptoms, but it was not an infection as the ER and physician had been treating me for since December 2014, its a Auto immune disease they failed to detect. They had been prescribing me medication that was making the disease worse, it was affecting my day to day living, and I could have potentially died. I just want to know if there's any legal action to be taken as I feel there should be.
1 ANSWER
Doctors and other health care providers must comply with the applicable standard of care when evaluating and diagnosing patients. The standard of care is defined is what most doctors with similar training and experience would do under the same circumstances. If your physician and the ER physicians failed to perform standard tests or make the appropriate diagnosis from the information available to them, then they may have fallen below the standard of care. However, if they examined you, performed the appropriate tests, and made a reasonable diagnosis based on the symptoms which ultimately turned out to be wrong, then they would not be negligent. Doctors are not held to a standard of perfection. They only have to act reasonably to comply with the standard of care. Whether or not you could or should pursue legal action would depend on a full evaluation of all of the facts.
Answered on Aug 31st, 2015 at 1:27 PM