Liability in Cherry Hill Medical Malpractice Cases

In medical malpractice cases, liability is based on a healthcare professional’s deviation from the standard of care. To prove a doctor is liable for malpractice, someone needs to first establish that there was a standard of care applicable to the condition and that that doctor deviated or failed to follow that standard of care.

To better understand how to establish liability in Cherry Hill medical malpractice cases, an individual should consult with a lawyer immediately. An experienced medical malpractice attorney could build a claim to help maximize any potential damages you may be owed.

Signing a Consent Form

Informed consent is a unique issue in the medical malpractice arena. Often, it involves whether a person has been given the information that a reasonable person would want in similar circumstances. Many times, consent forms are seen in the context of a surgery where somebody makes the argument they were not told of the potential risks of the surgery. They may argue that those risks were not realized and that they sustained undue harm. The question becomes whether or not they were informed of those risks and whether or not they made the decision to undertake those risks for some sort of hope for a positive result. This element is crucial when determining liability in a local medical malpractice case.

Often, consent forms are preprinted and/or contain vague or ambiguous language. This may mean the individual who signed the form may not have been properly advised of the risks associated with their specific procedure.

An experienced attorney would look at the informed consent forms, gather evidence, and determine whether or not the patient was properly informed of the risks involved. This will help them determine liability in a Cherry Hill medical malpractice claim.

Complications of Liability

Liability can be complicated in Cherry Hill medical negligence cases by these issues of informed consent as to whether or not a patient agreed to undergo the specific risks that came to fruition. Other issues involve the concept of medical judgment.

Doctors typically try to rely on this to defend the matter in a sense that there were two courses or two alternative standards, they chose one, and they are perfectly entitled to do that under the law. This is because each option was a recognized standard of care. That is considered medical judgment.

However, medical judgment only comes into play when there are two options and both are within the standard of care. That is the area of dispute that requires expert testimony to understand the nature of that defense.

Deviation from the Standard of Care

The contents of an informed consent sheet will dictate how successful a plaintiff can be in arguing and making a claim for medical negligence. There are times a patient has not read the informed consent sheet and yet signed it.

It may be difficult to prove the case if what happened was a risk listed on the informed consent sheet. However, there are other times when patients do not read the informed consent sheet, but the deviation from the standard of care was of such a nature that it did not matter what was on the informed consent sheet. This is a fact-sensitive, case-by-case analysis. Such liability in a Cherry Hill medical malpractice case can only be determined with the assistance of an attorney.