South Florida Personal Injury Blog

Most health care providers make every effort to care for their patients. Unfortunately, when they do not use accepted principles and techniques which are appropriate for the situation, a Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer can help you determine if medical malpractice has occurred. If a doctor, nurse, or other health care provider has injured you, contact our Broward injury attorney.

Medical malpractice occurs when a health care provider injures a patient by providing inadequate or inappropriate care under the circumstances. Our Broward personal injury lawyer can explain the possible injuries for which you could recover. Medical malpractice injuries could be death, worsening of your condition, increased pain, complications, or other problems associated with the negligent care. In an emergency room situation, medical malpractice may be more difficult to prove: you may have to show that the doctor or nurse acted with “reckless disregard” when rendering care for you. A Fort Lauderdale injury attorney can advise you on the standard of care the providers should have adhered to in your case.

Generally, doctors carry malpractice insurance. In Florida, doctors must usually either carry a minimum amount of insurance or maintain a certain amount of assets for use the in the event that they commit medical malpractice. Unfortunately, any Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyer knows that the malpractice insurance may be insufficient. In the event that the doctor injures you beyond what his insurance can pay for, he will be personally responsible to you for the difference.

A Broward injury lawyer will typically represent the patient herself or certain family members in a Florida medical malpractice suit. Family members can usually only recover if the patient died or the injuries are permanent. Children who are under the age of 25 whose parent suffered an injury, parents of children under the age of 25 who were injured, and spouses can sue. If the patient died from her injuries, her estate may sue to recover damages which will be distributed to the heirs in accordance with the intestacy statute or the will of the deceased patient.

Our Fort Lauderdale personal injury attorney is accustomed to working with the Florida medical malpractice statute of limitations. When you are injured by a health care provider’s negligence, you have only two years to sue after you find out or should have found out about the injury. A patient is required to reasonable investigate the symptoms of the injury in order to uncover the medical malpractice. Unless the medical professional has actually taken steps to misrepresent your care or to hide the injury inflicted, you cannot sue more than four years after the injury occurred. Even if you had no way of knowing about your injury until more than four years after it was incurred, you cannot sue if your doctor did not try to deceive you.