What is a "medical malpractice"??? how would a plastic surgeon be sued for a medical malpractice?

[flannagain]

What is a MALPRACTICE-MEDICAL case???

? He has been doing plastic surgery for 36 years and has had several of those cases but for the past 4 years he hasnt had one so thats good! I am planning on getting my nose done next week by him. He seems to do good nose jobs and i am getting it done no matter what by him because i already paid, but what is a MALPRACTICE-MEDICAL

[camdin90]

In medicine there is what's called a standard of care, what a reasonable and prudent doctor would do in a given circumstance, sort of like if you break your leg, 99.9% of doctors will get an x-ray to confirm the broken leg. The doc who doesn't get an x-ray is guilty of med/mal. Now that doesn't mean that you suffer permanent harm beacuse he didn't get an x-ray, and thus, you would have no suit.

On top of that, many doctors may not meet the standard of care at a given moment, but unless that breach of the standard of care results in permanent harm, then you would be barred from filing suit; i.e., no lawyer is going to take your case just because you're angry. It costs about $250,000 to bring a suit to fruition, and most attorneys who practice med/mal law take these cases on contingency, meaning they don't get paid if they don't win. But it is their money, not yours, that you're going to court on, and so that means you'd better have a solid, bona fide case of med/mal, because even going to court does not mean that you will win; in fact, 90% of cases brought do NOT win, not because they are not bona fide, but because they are hard to prove, or as happened recently in my town, Yeah, we know the doc screwed up, but he's the only doctor for 30 miles.

I agree with Miss A. Many doctors have lawsuits filed against them, and many of those docs are quickly nonsuited. What this means is that Dr. Bob's name appears in a medical record; thus being named in a suit, but as discovery goes on it is found that Dr. Bob was just passing through and had no direct hand in your care. He will be dropped from the lawsuit because he is not responsible.

I will further agree with Miss A that just because a doctor is sued does not mean he is guilty. I will be the first to attest that somethings things just happen that no one can foresee, or plan for, or control.

I will diverge with her on this point: While it is true that sometimes stuff just happens that's beyond the doctor's control, it is just as true that many doctors just flat screw up, not paying attention, wanting to go home and pass the patient off onto someone else without giving all the information, don't get the necessary scans to have the whole story, which leads to mistakes, leave the job to the nurses with a word to "call me if something comes up," (which then gets the nurses in trouble), or they forget to document something critical, which results in contradictary orders.

This brings me to your doctor. In all the work I've done, I've seen doctors who get sued once, very few who gets sued twice, and fewer still who get sued three times. If your doc has been sued multiple times, you owe it to yourself to find out the terms of his suits; i.e., how many did he settle? How many times has he gone to trial and won/lost? How many times was he nonsuited? Are you really suggesting that a different nose is worth your life, or permanent problems for the rest of your life? Because that is what you are playing with.

Just for the record, I am not an attorney, but my job requires me to read court and deposition transcripts, I about 80 percent of the work that I do is medical malpractice. Miss A is correct when she says that just because you're sued doesn't mean your guilty. But it is just as true that when you have been sued multiple times, you really might be.

Investigate your doctor more thoroughly before you trust him with your life, because that is what you are doing.

[donough]

Medical malpractice means that the doctor didn't provide care up to an acceptable standard and caused some harm to a patient. Generally suits are bought by patients who had a bad outcome to a procedure the doctor performed: in the case of a plastic surgeon, this could range from making somebody's breast implants lopsided to something more serious like killing someone with a post-operative infection.

Just the fact that a doctor got sued for MM doesn't mean he was guilty... sometimes bad things happen in medicine that aren't actually the doctor's fault. A lot of doctors will get sued at some point in their career: obstetricians and ER doctors probably get the worst of it. But the fact that there have been *several* suits is a bit worrying.

[iden]

If you have permanent damage, a bad nose job, and if he does do a bad job, he doesn't correct it.

I got a bad nose job. If you do get a bad one, make sure to bring it up to him every. single. day. My plastic surgeon told me it was just swelling and to wait. Then after 2 years (coincidentally the deadline to get him to fix it free of charge), he said "he didn't see what was wrong" when it was visibly crooked (and it wasn't before).

I wish I could go back in time and fix it.

Good luck! :)