Medical Malpractice in Athens Clarke County Georgia
When a loved one dies or is seriously hurt under a physician’s care, it can be extremely emotionally difficult to have unanswered questions. Unfortunately, doctors and hospitals are often not clear with family members about what exactly went wrong, and in many cases people are left completely in the dark, left to wonder if things could have been different.
While this page is intended to provide you with reliable, accurate information about how to move forward if you have lost someone, keep in mind that the best way to get information about your particular case is to call us directly.
We have a huge amount of respect for the physicians and nurses who do great work every day for our families and friends, but unfortunately we know that medical malpractice does occur at times.
Just like all of us, doctors and nurses make mistakes. However, due to the nature of their profession, the results of their mistakes can be disastrous. Here are some important things to keep in mind when dealing with a medical malpractice issue:
Athens Georgia’s Most Common Medical Malpractice Cases
A Patient Was Given the Wrong Medicine—This can happen when a pharmacy mistakenly gives someone the wrong medicine, or even (but rarely) when a doctor prescribes the wrong medicine.
Surgery Mistakes—Due to the complex nature of surgery, doctors can make many different mistakes. Some of the most common mistakes are having an unsterile environment that leads to infection, leaving sponges or clamps inside a patient, making errors when administering anesthesia (which can lead to death or severe brain damage), and puncturing a patient’s organs.
Mistakes During Birth—Although these mistakes are rare, we have seen cases where a doctor’s mistake led to a baby dying or having severe brain damage, as well as serious injuries to the mother.
Poor Nursing Home Care—While it is incredibly sad to think of elderly people in nursing homes being treated badly, the reality is that we have seen clients who are malnourished, have bed sores from being left unattended for too long, or have been physically abused by their caretakers.
One of our partners, Charles E. (“Trip”) Johnson, III, has a lifetime of experience dealing with medical malpractice. Because his father is a doctor in Atlanta and Trip himself has worked as a medical malpractice defense lawyer for a large insurance company, he is in an ideal position to help evaluate your claim. If we find that your case is indeed the result of bad medical practice, then we will apply our full effort to your claim.
While this page is intended to provide you with reliable, accurate information about how to move forward if you have lost someone, keep in mind that the best way to get information about your particular case is to call us directly.
We have a huge amount of respect for the physicians and nurses who do great work every day for our families and friends, but unfortunately we know that medical malpractice does occur at times.
Just like all of us, doctors and nurses make mistakes. However, due to the nature of their profession, the results of their mistakes can be disastrous. Here are some important things to keep in mind when dealing with a medical malpractice issue:
- For the doctor to be liable, he or she must have done something that was clearly below the “standard of medical care”, meaning that the doctor did something different from what a good-quality, careful doctor would have done. This means that harm resulting from misdiagnosis, surgery, or hospital stays are not liable if they are not the direct result of poor medical care.
- Inexperienced attorneys are rarely able to determine if actual malpractice occurred—you need someone with significant experience working on your case.
- In the medical world, things go wrong frequently, and malpractice is not usually the reason.
- Medical malpractice cases are expensive for law firms to carry out, so our firm will only take on cases that are completely legitimate.
- If the medical malpractice did not result in serious injury to a patient, then the case is not worth pursuing—it will take more time, effort, and money than you will get back.
- Misdiagnosis cases, when a doctor or pharmacy is responsible for a patient receiving the wrong medicine or the wrong dosage, are usually very complex situations.
Athens Georgia’s Most Common Medical Malpractice Cases
A Patient Was Given the Wrong Medicine—This can happen when a pharmacy mistakenly gives someone the wrong medicine, or even (but rarely) when a doctor prescribes the wrong medicine.
Surgery Mistakes—Due to the complex nature of surgery, doctors can make many different mistakes. Some of the most common mistakes are having an unsterile environment that leads to infection, leaving sponges or clamps inside a patient, making errors when administering anesthesia (which can lead to death or severe brain damage), and puncturing a patient’s organs.
Mistakes During Birth—Although these mistakes are rare, we have seen cases where a doctor’s mistake led to a baby dying or having severe brain damage, as well as serious injuries to the mother.
Poor Nursing Home Care—While it is incredibly sad to think of elderly people in nursing homes being treated badly, the reality is that we have seen clients who are malnourished, have bed sores from being left unattended for too long, or have been physically abused by their caretakers.
One of our partners, Charles E. (“Trip”) Johnson, III, has a lifetime of experience dealing with medical malpractice. Because his father is a doctor in Atlanta and Trip himself has worked as a medical malpractice defense lawyer for a large insurance company, he is in an ideal position to help evaluate your claim. If we find that your case is indeed the result of bad medical practice, then we will apply our full effort to your claim.