What Are The Legal Elements Of Medical Malpractice?

In this article, I’ll be discussing everything you need to know about medical malpractice. And I will explain the condition required to be in place before you can allege performance of medical malpractice on you. If you think you have all the evidence that are elements of medical malpractice done on you, pls contact medical malpractice/ and seek redress. However, you might want to know what’s involved in medical malpractice first. So, read on.

What Is Medical Malpractice?

Medical malpractice is an offense of threat to the life of a patient when a medical practitioner or professional administers a healthcare service that is evidently injurious to the health of his/her patient. It is a breach of medical constitution that a patient with evidence and elements that characterize such practice can allege against in the court of law. 

Hence…

What Are The Elements Of Medical Malpractice?

The elements of medical malpractice are the proofs that substantiate your claim that you have truly suffered medical malpractice. There are four elements of medical malpractice and they include

1. The existence of a legal duty on the part of the doctor to provide care or treatment to the patient

The first element that substantiates the performance of medical malpractice is for you to ascertain that doctor-patient relationship has been established. There are instances of medical care that prove doctor-patient relationship while some instances of medical care do not. For instance, if you are an accident victim on the roadside, and a doctor attends to you to cover a clinic or you are admitted to a clinic where a doctor attends to your medical needs,  it is said that a doctor-patient relationship has been established. However, in a social setting where the doctor doesn’t consider the care as professional, it is said that no doctor-patient relationship is established.

2. A breach of this duty by a failure of the treating doctor to adhere to the standards of the profession

After a doctor-patient relationship is proved to be established, the next element to consider is whether the doctor breaches the ‘standard of professional care.’ A doctor breaches the standard of professional care if the doctor fails to give the quality of care he/she ought to have provided. To claim that the doctor breached the standard of professional care there must be medical expert testimony because a lay man testimony can not be used to determine if the breach has actually occurred.

3. A causal relationship between such breach of duty and injury to the patient

Another element that proves the performance of medical malpractices is the identification of reasonable relationship or correlation between the breach of duty and injury to the patient. In short, there must be injury caused to the patient. If the alleged breach of standard of care causes no injury to the patient, what is the point of the alleged breach of standard of care?

4. The existence of damages that flow from the injury such that the legal system can provide redress

The final element of medical malpractice is the existence of damages incurred as a result of the injury. Simply put, the injured patient alleging medical malpractice must come with a calculated monetary value of damages incurred as a result of the injury.