Being prescribed a medication for your illness or condition should provide what you need to manage or relieve your symptoms, fight an illness, or feel better in general. Unfortunately, you could suffer even worse health consequences if your doctor, nurse or pharmacist makes a medication error.
If you suffered from an overdose, under-dose, severe allergic reaction, adverse drug interaction or another type of harm due to a medication error in Boston, Massachusetts, contact Barry D. Lang, M.D. & Associates about a potential lawsuit. Filing a medical malpractice claim could provide the justice and financial compensation that you deserve. Contact our Boston medication error lawyers today for a free consultation.
Why Clients Choose Us
- We are a team of highly experienced Boston medical malpractice lawyers and staff members, trained under the guidance of Barry D. Lang – a licensed physician as well as an attorney.
- Our law firm has doctors and nurses on staff, giving us a unique perspective on case evaluations. Our case reviews are fast, as we don’t have to send cases to outside experts.
- You won’t be charged anything in attorney’s fees for our assistance with your medication error case unless you receive financial compensation.
What Are The Most Common Medication Errors?
A medical malpractice claim in Massachusetts is brought on the grounds that a health care provider failed to meet the medical industry’s standards of care or breached a duty of care owed to the patient. When a breach of the duty of care results in a preventable patient injury – such as an adverse drug interaction or overdose due to a medication error – the patient can file a medical malpractice suit to hold the negligent professional, hospital or pharmacy accountable.
A medication error can involve many types of medical negligence or malpractice, such as:
- Ignoring a patient’s medical history
- Failing to check for existing prescriptions or medications
- Failing to read a patient’s chart before prescribing a new medication
- Accidentally prescribing the wrong medication
- Failing to warn a patient of a known potential drug side effect
- Prescribing the wrong dosage
- Incorrectly filling a patient’s prescription
- Improperly labeling drugs at a pharmacy
- Mixing up two or more patients or drugs
Many different entities can be held responsible for a medication error in Boston. The defendant(s) in your case will depend on when the mistake took place. The defendant could be your doctor for a prescription error, a nurse for incorrect drug administration or a pharmacy for errors connected to filling your prescription. If the medication itself contained a defect, you may have grounds to file a product liability lawsuit against the drug manufacturer.
What Are the Risks of Medication Errors?
Medication errors are among the most common forms of medical malpractice and come with grave risks. While some medication errors result in minor harm, such as temporary over-sedation or temporary unpleasant symptoms, others can cause great harm or even death. Some examples of serious consequences of medical errors include:
- Over-sedation or overdose
- Under-sedation during surgical procedures
- Severe allergic reactions
- Dangerous drug interactions and other adverse events
- Death
All medication errors are preventable, but sadly, researchers estimate that medication errors occur in 5 out of every 100 administrations of medication.
What to Do If You Suspect a Medication Error
If you suspect you’ve suffered a medication error there are steps you should take to protect your physical health and financial future. Medications are dangerous and sometimes cause long-term harm that requires further medical treatment to correct. If you think you’ve experienced a medication mistake, take the following steps:
- Get medical attention immediately. If you are in a hospital or other facility, call a nurse and report the error. If you are at home with prescribed medication, go to an ER, bringing the medication with you
- Have a thorough medical evaluation and tell the doctor about all of your symptoms
- Ask for a detailed medical report with your doctor’s notes about what medication and dosage was prescribed and what was administered or taken
- Have the doctor include treatment recommendations and prognosis in the report
- Follow all of your doctor’s recommendations, attend every appointment, and fill every prescription
- Keep copies of all medical records, bills, and invoices
- Call a Boston medical malpractice attorney
A skilled medication error attorney can help you gain the maximum chance of recovering full compensation for your damages, including your medical bills and pain and suffering. While monetary compensation cannot undo the error and resulting medical complications, it can help you gain access to the best medical treatment and ease financial worries while you focus on recovering.
How to Prove a Medication Error Case in Massachusetts
In a Massachusetts medical malpractice lawsuit, it is the plaintiff or plaintiff’s attorney’s duty to meet the burden of proof. This is the amount of evidence required to establish that the defendant is responsible for the injury or harm being claimed. The burden of proof in a civil case is a preponderance of the evidence, meaning enough evidence to show that the defendant is more likely to be responsible for the plaintiff’s injury than not.
Proving a medication error case in Massachusetts may require evidence such as your medical records, notes from your doctor or nurse, and testimony from a relevant medical expert. At Barry D. Lang, M.D. & Associates, our Boston medication error lawyers have close relationships with top medical providers across the country to provide trial testimony, when needed. Our law firm can help you collect evidence and pursue justice for any type of medication error committed against you in Boston.
Proving Liability in Medication Mistake Malpractice Cases in Boston
In order for a medical provider’s malpractice insurance to cover the damages from your injury, your attorney must prove that the party at fault bears liability for the mistake. Showing liability in medical malpractice requires having evidence-backed proof that the case meets the following legal points of liability:
- That you and the provider had a medical professional/patient relationship at the time the medication was prescribed or administered
- That the provider had a duty of care to treat you in a manner that meets the industry-accepted standard of care
- That this duty of care was breached through an act of negligence on the part of the provider
- That the negligence directly caused your injury
- That the injury caused you significant economic and non-economic damages
Doctors and other medical providers are held to a special duty of care to treat every patient with the standard of care that’s accepted in the medical industry. Liability relies on the premise that the doctor did not uphold that standard in a way that another reasonable provider would have in the same circumstances.
Contact a Medication Error Attorney in Boston For a Free Case Consultation
If you are the victim of a medication error made by your doctor, pharmacist, nurse or another health care provider, contact the Boston medical malpractice lawyers at Barry D. Lang, M.D. & Associates for assistance. Our team of medication error attorneys in Boston can help you bring a cause of action and pursue fair compensation for your related injuries or illness. We also handle wrongful death cases if you lost a loved one due to a fatal medication error. Call 1-877-LAW-DOCS today or contact us online to request a free medication error case review.