Many birth injuries still frequently occur even though they're completely preventable. When these types of injuries occur, they're definitely a form of medical malpractice. Here's what you need to know about preventable birth injuries.
How Preventable Birth Injuries Occur
Despite the care doctors and support staff take, accidents and unforeseen circumstances can still develop. However, when negligence leads to those accidents and circumstances, then it's a case of medical malpractice.
In this case, negligence means a physician didn't follow established norms for dealing with a pregnancy. By not following those norms and procedures, an injury can occur.
Types of Actions that Can Lead to Birth Injuries
"Birth injury" is a term encompassing many possible conditions. Birth injuries can happen to the child or the mother. They can also happen before, during, or after delivery. Since there are a number of possible conditions, it's better to look at some of the more common causes of birth injuries. These can include:
- A lack of communication
- Improper physical manipulation of the infant during delivery
- Giving the wrong type of medication to the mother before and during labor
- Failure to properly monitor the mother or the infant
These things can lead to a lifetime of harm, pain, or complications for the mother, child, or both. These all represent types of negligence as well. It's up to you to prove negligence played a role in a birth injury.
Proving a Birth Injury Was Preventable
If you or your child suffered a birth injury, it's not always easy to prove negligence caused it. The best way to start is by questioning what factors caused the birth injury to occur. Then you must ask if any of those factors represented preventable actions. That should lead to a series of more questions.
- Did the doctor do what he or she was supposed to?
- Did the facility give the proper amount of reasonable care?
- Was the mother warned of possible complications?
These questions can help, but getting the answers to them isn't always easy. To recover damages for medical malpractice, you should enlist the help of a medical malpractice attorney. When it's your word against the word of a doctor or medical facility, you will need all the help you can get.
Medical malpractice law isn't always easy to navigate. If you suspect you or a loved one were victims of medical malpractice, then contact a local medical malpractice attorney immediately, such as at Shaevitz Shaevitz & Kotzamanis.
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