Most people have the understanding that medical malpractice is the wrongdoing by a doctor or medical professional in terms of treatment of a patient. While this is somewhat correct, it is incomplete and imprecise.

To understand exactly what medical malpractice is and how medical malpractice claims work, you need to understand all of the elements necessary for a medical malpractice case. Medical malpractice is also considered with the medical negligence for it is a breach of duty by a medical professional that causes an undue injury to a patient. This short sentence implies three different critical elements that must be proven for a successful medical malpractice claim, such as; the breach of duty, its cause and finally its injury or damage done to the patient.

In order for a professional negligence claims to be successful, it must first be proven that the doctor, nurse, anesthesiologist, or any other medical professional performed their job in such a way that was inadequate or under par in terms of what would have been expected in the medical community. Every medical professional has a duty, when treating a patient, to perform as is required by the medical standard of care. If they do not, they are said to be negligent and have breached their duty.

The second part of a true medical negligence is the concept of causation. So you’re doctor made a huge mistake and you were injured. Now you have to be able to show how his or her error caused your injury. For example, if you have gotten bed sores from lying in bed for many days in the medical center, you must mention within your medical malpractice lawsuit that nursing staff or physicians are generally supposed to turn patients over a few times per day so they can prevent the sores. When you demonstrate that this is the standard of care that you’d expect from any hospital, and that your doctor failed to make this happen, you have a potential for winning your case.

And in order to have something for which to sue in a medical negligence, and win the case there must be some form of injury or “damages”. If no injury occurred, even though your doctor made an error, then there is not medical malpractice claim.

It is similar to a car accident case, in that if a driver runs a red light (breach of duty) and hits you (injury), and then he or she must pay for the damage they caused. However, if that same driver runs a red light and hit’s nothing, they don’t have to pay for anything (except of course a ticket if they get caught, but that’s criminal law, outside the scope of civil injury law).

For as they say “medical negligence is the failure to observe for the protection of the interests of another person, that degree of care, precaution and vigilance which the circumstances justly demand, whereby such other person suffers injury” and therefore must pay for their damages.