Originally from Dispute Resolution Journal

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The American Board of Professional Liability Attorneys defines medical malpractice as “when a hospital, doctor, or other health care professional, through a negligent act or omission, causes an injury to a patient.”  This can include a wide variety of possible mistakes by the healthcare professional, such as “failure to diagnose or misdiagnosis, misreading or ignoring laboratory results, unnecessary surgery, surgical errors or wrong site surgery, improper medication or dosage,”  and many more. Furthermore, these errors can occur at any time during the healthcare process, including “during the diagnoses, during the treatment, or advice for treatment after an illness.” 

The creation and implementation of law to prevent and penalize medical malpractice has traditionally been left up to the individual states. This means that the specific rules and procedures in place to govern how, when, and why an individual can file a claim when the individual feels he or she has been the victim of malpractice varies by state and the claims themselves are heard and decided according to state law. However, a few elements are generally necessary for a malpractice claim to be successful. First, there needs to have been “a violation of the standard of care.”  This means that the healthcare provider performed short of what is expected of healthcare professionals and “took less care than that which is customarily practiced by the average member of profession in good standing.”