Going through a surgery or other complex medical procedure is difficult, but the experience can become even more challenging if you develop an infection afterward. Infections can happen for many reasons, but sometimes they are an avoidable complication that may have been caused by your medical team or because of unsanitary conditions in your hospital or doctor’s office.
If you believe that you or a loved one suffered from a preventable infection, you may be able to pursue damages from the doctor, hospital, or other medical facility that caused or contributed to the development of the infection. If you are thinking about filing a medical malpractice lawsuit, you need a Charlottesville avoidable infection malpractice lawyer. Contact the experienced surgical error attorneys at MichieHamlett to discuss your case.
In an avoidable infection malpractice case, showing that you deserve damages is not as simple as just producing evidence that you developed an infection after receiving medical care. First, your lawyer must demonstrate that the negligence, recklessness, or intentional action of your medical care provider breached a duty of care that they owed to you. Next, your Charlottesville attorney must show that this breach of duty was the reason that the avoidable infection developed.
According to Virginia law, your legal team must show that your medical providers behaved in a way that was not reasonable. For example, you must argue that your doctor’s behavior and level of care did not meet the standard that any reasonable, normally skilled, or qualified physician would provide, or that the hospital’s policies and procedures failed to meet the standard of a reasonable hospital.
Your lawyer can also argue that you should be able to recover damages from more than one of your medical providers or from the providers as well as the medical facility. In this type of case, the court would hold them jointly and severally liable, meaning that either one or both of them could be responsible for paying your damages.
In a malpractice case in Charlottesville, your lawyer may request both monetary and non-monetary damages for the preventable infection. Monetary damages, which may also be called economic damages, are relatively straightforward; they include things like medical bills, prescription expenses, lost wages, and other costs that you had to pay or may have to pay in the future because of your avoidable infection.
Non-monetary damages, also called non-economic damages, include more intangible costs that you suffered because of the medical negligence. These may include things like pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of companionship, or inconvenience.
State law limits the amount that victims can recover in medical malpractice cases. The cap is set to gradually increase over several years until it reaches $3 million on July 31, 2031. Your lawyer can advise you about what the cap was when your infection occurred.
If you have suffered a post-surgical infection that you suspect is due to medical malpractice, you deserve damages for what you have suffered. But to build the strongest case, it is important to seek assistance from a qualified lawyer.
At MichieHamlett, our attorneys are on your side. Reach out to a Charlottesville avoidable infection malpractice lawyer on our team today so we can take care of your case while you focus on getting better.
