Portland Medical Malpractice Law Blog

Think about the average hospital with countless patients receiving care at the same time. There are only so many nurses and doctors to go around, and because hospitals are always trying to save money, they're often pushing themselves to get more done with fewer people. As they push the limit of what's possible in this regard, serious errors and mistakes can occur.

One problem that is common in hospitals involves giving the wrong medication to patients. In most cases, this isn't fatal or injurious and nurses or doctors resolve the medication mistake soon enough. In some cases, however, a potentially dangerous medication is given to the wrong person -- perhaps to a patient with an allergy or to a patient who should never take the drug due to the possibility of a negative reaction.

Whenever a doctor prescribes medication -- and whenever a nurse administers medication at a hospital -- there is a chance of making a mistake. In fact, these mistakes happen all the time and every day at hospitals throughout the United States, and usually, they don't result in any kind of injury or adverse reaction in the patient. Sometimes, however, a medication error will come with devastating and fatal consequences.

When prescribing medications, doctors need to consider a lot of different factors, such as the health of the patient, the unique bodily characteristics of the patient, other medications being taken and the potential for allergic reaction. By failing to consider and weigh all of these issues, a doctor could make a grave and fatal mistake.

Medical doctors don't have the magical ability to diagnose every illness perfectly. Nevertheless, doctors do have a duty to their patients to follow standard medical procedure. In this respect, they need to ask specific questions, check certain areas of the body and perform specific tests depending on the answers to their questions. They should also keep investigating the ailment until they have arrived at a similar answer and diagnosis to that of any other reasonable doctor.

Although different doctors could have different opinions about certain circumstances, part of the process of diagnosing a patient involves a doctor listing other possibilities in order of descending probability. This allows the doctor to stay open to other ideas and not completely rule out all other explanations for the patient's symptoms.

Most family members who are pursuing a wrongful death lawsuit want an idea of how much money in damages they can — or should — pursue. The answer to this question is difficult to pin down until the wrongful death suit progresses further into litigation. However, there generally needs to be a starting point, i.e., an initial dollar amount to be claimed in the lawsuit.

When trying to determine the amount of losses to claim, several factors could affect the figure, such as:

• The victim's age
• The victim's health before death
• The victim's earning capacity
• Whether the victim was supporting a family
• The nature of the accident that caused the victim's death
• The amount of suffering endured by the victim
• Whether the victim incurred significant medical bills prior to death