Medical Negligence is an awful thought as a whole, especially when you think about the impact it can have on the unfortunate patient and their friends and family all because of a simple mistake which could have been avoided.
But to ensure that you or a family member don’t have any occurrence with medical negligence, these tips below are here to help. If you know what you can do to ensure that everything is done by the book, then medical negligence should never occur. It’s better to be safe than sorry!
- Communicate
You have to communicate. Simply put there is nothing more important than maintaining a healthy doctor-patient relationship built on clear and effective communication. Communication is one of the main reasons why medical negligence can occur no matter how talented, educated or experienced your doctor is.
You need to ask questions if you don’t understand something, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, if an operation, for example, is going to be performed on you, you have absolutely every right to know everything about it!
- Write things down
Whilst communication is incredibly important, keeping documentation is also up there. Explicit, unambiguous documentation can become handy should you ever need it to justify what occurred in order to help your case. Most medical professionals keep documentation anyway but it’s always nice to ensure that you try to keep an account of what’s happened throughout.
- Manage your expectations
The health expert you’re seeing should be managing your expectations throughout the process. If they’re not and something unfortunately occurs then you may have a solid case for medical negligence. You have to ensure that they are being as accurate and informative as possible when explaining everything to you. They should use very little medical jargon as possible and make it easy enough for you to understand what they have planned.
- Get advice
Sometimes you get that gut feeling that something just isn’t quite right even though they’re the professional and gut feelings are often pretty strong and right. If you’re unsure, there are numbers you can call to ask other medical professional’s opinions, online forums, or even friends and family, there’s always somewhere you can go.
- Check your prescriptions
You’d be surprised the number of times GP’s and other medical experts make errors when prescribing medication because they don’t pay attention to the patients’ allergies/actual issue. Always give the labels and instructions a quick read and actually see if an error has occurred. If one has, it’s an easy fix, but if you don’t pay attention then it could cause serious medical issues.
These tips are put in place to ensure that medical negligence doesn’t occur to you or a friend or family member. Be as healthy as you can be and get the information you need from your medical expert to ensure that you don’t fall victim to medical negligence. nine times out of ten, medical negligence is through a simple mistake that could have easily been avoided. It’s always better to be cautious!
Leave a Reply