What Is Pediatric Malpractice?

Attorneys for Medical Errors

You trust your pediatrician to diagnose and treat your kid with reasonable care when you bring him or her to the doctor. Pediatricians are crucial to children's health. Unfortunately, mistakes are made by physicians, nurses, and medical personnel, and these errors may cause serious injury to children. Not every blunder, on the other hand, has grounds for legal action. When a doctor fails to deliver medical services and treatment to a child in line with established medical standards, this is referred to as pediatric malpractice. When pediatric negligence happens, there is a chance that development and learning may be harmed, and that this damage will last a lifetime. You should not think that a pediatric malpractice injury is minor or that it will go away on its own; you may be facing long-term expenditures, and legal counsel may educate you on your options. You may be able to pursue legal action if your kid was the victim of poor pediatric treatment.

What Is Malpractice in Pediatrics?

A pediatrician may have committed malpractice if he or she fails to give treatment to a child patient according to commonly recognized medical standards and procedures. A child's significant injuries or death may come from a failure to provide appropriate medical care. Because youngsters come in different ways or don't speak in the same language as an adult patient, pediatricians may miss the health risk. When doctors are pressed for time, they may fail to provide a complete differential diagnosis. Pediatricians should be aware of the variations between child and adult patients and conduct thorough exams to check for diseases that a parent or kid is unaware of.

Proving Abuse of Children

If you need to prove pediatric malpractice, you must show: (1) that the physician owed your kid a professional duty of care, (2) that the pediatrician breached that duty of care, (3) cause, and (4) damages by a majority of the evidence. Pediatricians may violate their duty to use reasonable care by failing to adequately perform a physical examination, failing to timely follow up, failing to adequately screen a child, misinterpreting lab results, making surgical errors, failing to order appropriate tests, ignoring relevant patient history, overlooking symptoms, failing to properly monitor a child, failing to provide proper medications, failing to timely diagnose infections, or failing to timely diagnose a septic infection.

In most circumstances, the statute of limitations for a minor kid in a medical malpractice claim in New York does not begin to run until the child reaches the age of eighteen, and it is normally two and a half years after that. It's vital to remember that the statute of limitations can't be extended beyond 10 years after the malpractice occurrence or after a foreign item in the child's body was detected or should have been identified. A professional medical negligence attorney can help you sue your child's physician for medical misconduct.

Award of Excellence

You must submit a written certificate of merit with your pediatric malpractice case, or within 90 days after filing if complying with this requirement proves too onerous. The certificate must state that you have reviewed the facts and consulted with at least one licensed doctor, and that you have concluded that there is a reasonable basis to file a medical malpractice lawsuit based on the consultation, or that you were unable to comply with the consultation requirement despite three separate good faith attempts with three different doctors.

Damages

Medical treatment, rehabilitation, therapy, medical equipment, lost earnings, replacement wages, out-of-pocket expenditures, pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of pleasure, and other damages are often compensated in a pediatric negligence case.

The nature and scope of the damages are determined by the circumstances. For instance, if your kid was working after school before being wounded by pediatric negligence, but is no longer able to due to paralysis caused by the malpractice, lost income may be recoverable. In such case, it may be feasible to recover future lost earnings as well, but you may need to employ an economist or other specialist to figure out how to quantify those losses. It may be possible to seek damages for scarring and deformity if a kid is permanently damaged due to pediatric negligence. It may be possible to seek damages to pay for a caretaker if a kid is irreversibly harmed due to pediatric negligence and requires lifetime care.

Wrongful death cases resulting from pediatric malpractice are not the same as other types of wrongful death actions. In the event that your child dies as a result of pediatric negligence, you may be able to seek monetary damages in a wrongful death action. You may be able to get compensation for your child's services while he or she was still a minor, less the fees and expenditures of raising and teaching him or her. A wrongful death case, on the other hand, will not be able to compensate you for mental agony or pain and suffering.