Heather Arranie 
As a patient, you rely on your physician to accurately diagnose your illness and recommend a course of therapy. Regretfully, incorrect diagnoses do occur occasionally. You may end up with serious repercussions as a result, such as
- Receiving the incorrect kind of treatment
- Having your illness deteriorate
- Delay in getting your condition treated
Legally speaking, this is known as medical malpractice. Personal injury law encompasses this aspect of the law. Not criminal, but civil cases deal with personal injury. Criminal law may, however, play a role in cases involving deliberate misdiagnosis or those that end in death.
Numerous medical malpractice claims stem from misdiagnosis or failure to diagnose an ailment or harm. In this article, we will discuss what incorrect diagnosis is and how to prove it after filing a medical malpractice case.
Examples of Misdiagnosis
Listed below are a few common illnesses that can be subjected to an incorrect diagnosis:
- Chronic bronchitis instead of asthma
- A heart attack is misdiagnosed as a panic attack or dyspepsia
- Lyme disease incorrectly diagnosed as mononucleosis, flu, or depression
- Parkinson’s disease is mistaken for stress, a stroke, or Alzheimer’s
- Lupus wrongly diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, or chronic fatigue syndrome
Most doctors are trained to make a “differential diagnosis.” To do this, they must rank their “differing” diagnoses or assessments in order of likelihood of causing a patient’s symptoms. Dismissing symptoms as transient, insignificant, or unworthy of care is the most frequent way clinicians behave negligently. This circumstance might cause the underlying illness or cause an injury to worsen, leading to additional harm.
What Should You Do If Your Condition Worsens After Visiting a Doctor?
In an emergency, you should immediately visit a hospital and get adequate medical attention. Your top priority should be getting healthy.
If you have hired an attorney, they should give you further instructions on how to go about the case.
Patients’ actions are considered in medical malpractice proceedings just as much as doctors. This is known as mitigating damages. They aim to ensure you are not intentionally exaggerating your disability or illness to commit fraud. If you require alternative care, you must receive it immediately.
You may be able to sue a doctor for the initial injuries or illness you suffered. However, new injuries that result from waiting around might not be reversible. You would be accountable for those additional wounds.
What is the Process to Prove Misdiagnosis?
You must file a medical malpractice lawsuit to demonstrate a doctor’s negligence. To prove negligence, four requirements must be met.
- Duty of care: Was there a duty of care on the doctor’s part? The doctor usually has an obligation to act in a fairly competent manner when there is a doctor-patient relationship.
- Breach: Did the physician fail in their duty? You would have to demonstrate that a doctor of reasonable competence could have made the correct diagnosis of the condition to establish a breach of duty.
- Causation: Did the misdiagnosis you received from the doctor hurt you? It’s possible that your loved one’s doctor misdiagnosed them with cancer rather than the flu, but the next day, someone ran them over and killed them. The doctor’s incorrect diagnosis did not cause the fatality.
- Damages: Were there any quantifiable losses due to the incorrect diagnoses? It’s possible that the doctor misdiagnosed you with migraines rather than the flu. But the medication your doctor gave you, Tylenol, also assisted in curing your sickness. This indicates that the incorrect diagnosis had no adverse effects on you.
Conclusion
Proving a misdiagnosis can be challenging. In complex circumstances, it might be tough to determine whether a medical condition is just getting worse as a result of a delayed or failed diagnosis.
Hiring a qualified attorney right away would be ideal to avoid most problems and build a foolproof case.
