The Role of Miscommunication in Medical Malpractice
Long gone are the days when you could rely on a few doctors and nurses to cover the full range of your medical needs from diagnosis to treatment and follow-up. Even in relatively simple medical situations, your treatment team today might include 12 or 15 or 20 different individuals, each with a clearly defined role and specific responsibilities for your care and treatment.
Communication errors between medical professionals have emerged as a serious patient risk as the size and complexity of treatment teams have increased in recent years. If you suspect that a serious injury or death in your family was caused by miscommunication within your medical team, contact an attorney at Greene & Eisen in Cleveland for a free consultation about your legal options.
Call 216-687-0900 for Advice About Medical Miscommunication Problems
Ohio law requires that every medical malpractice claim be supported by expert medical opinion to the effect that a particular violation of a standard of care caused a particular patient injury or death. We therefore work with medical experts from many specialties from the earliest stages of a case to see what went wrong in a given case.
Our experts frequently conclude that each doctor or nurse performed his or her own job according to established protocols and standards of care, but failed to communicate properly with others about critically important developments in a patient's case. These can include:
- Reviewing a medical history or current medications list
- Explaining radiology or pathology findings
- Considering the risks of surgery for a particular patient
- Monitoring vital signs and other real-time data for changes in condition
- Reporting changes in condition to physicians who can effectively intervene
- Asking followup questions when an initial report of an important development isn't fully understood
Miscommunication can occur at many levels or stages between doctors and nurses, referring and consulting doctors, residents and attending physicians, doctors and pharmacists, and other relationships within a treatment team.
Our lawyers' ability to establish medical miscommunication as an element of professional negligence in a malpractice case can protect the value of your claims when doctors are blaming one another for a tragic patient outcome.
For further information about our ability to analyze the effects of communication errors on the quality and competence of medical care, contact Greene & Eisen in Cleveland for a free consultation.
