It is important to know that doctors owe their patients a duty of care. Your doctor has a legal responsibility to exercise due care when treating you and that includes recommending the proper prescriptions for you without consideration of his or her own potential financial gain. To do otherwise may be medical malpractice in Pennsylvania.

If you are concerned about the appropriateness of your own prescription drugs then it is important to seek a second, independent opinion from another doctor.

As a parent there are steps that you can take to help protect your child from dangerous infections. Specifically, you can:

• Talk to the pediatric ICU staff about the steps they take to control infection.
• Make sure everyone who comes near your child, and especially near your child’s central line, is scrubbed and uses sterile equipment.
• Ask if the central line is still necessary for your child’s care and ask that it be removed as soon as it is safe to do so.
• Keep your own hands clean and insist on the same from all visitors.
• Speak up if you think something is wrong.

Remember, that while these steps may help protect your child, it is the hospital’s responsibility to prevent infections. If the hospital has failed to use reasonable care in the treatment of your child, including protecting your child from dangerous infections, then your family may have the right to recover damages for the injuries suffered by your child due to the hospital medical malpractice.

That appointment, that second opinion where you might learn the true nature of your illness, is your priority. You can make an appointment with a Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawyer before or after that appointment. When you call a Pennsylvania malpractice attorney, you can discuss when you should meet to discuss your potential case.

However, in the meantime do not wait to call another doctor. Do not wait another day to get the diagnosis, treatment and relief that you deserve.

Now you, with the help of your Pennsylvania medical malpractice lawyer, have filed a failure to diagnose lawsuit and the doctor is defending himself. The doctor may argue, for example, that it wasn’t his fault – someone else should have caught the mistake. Alternatively, you may have a doctor who argues that the failure to diagnose was because of the cancer itself and not because of his own negligence.

As the doctor argues that he did not breach his duty of care and acted as a reasonable doctor would’ve acted, you may become concerned and frustrated. However, you are not alone. Your Pennsylvania failure to diagnose attorney expects these defenses, is prepared for the defenses and will work hard to get you the fair and equitable discovery that you deserve.

The AMA report looked at outpatient data over 10 years (2000 -2010) and concluded that errors are occurring. Specifically, there are concerns about misdiagnoses, prescription mistakes, and other errors. The AMA is suggesting that more work needs to be done to study these problems, to find out how prevalent they are, why they are occurring, and how they can be prevented in the future.

Are you concerned about outpatient safety in Pennsylvania? What do you think should be done to make things safer and prevent medical malpractice?