Medical Negligence Lawyer – Jessup, PA

There is a certain uneasiness that can pervade your mind when you find yourself up against an unpleasant, unfamiliar situation. Here at Latona Law, we have been combating incidents of medical negligence for more than 30 years. In that time, we have come to understand how negligence affects people when it happens to them. It is overwhelming, scary, and maddening. After all, patients put their faith and trust in their doctors, and they should not end up injured as a result.

If you or a loved one has been injured by a doctor, or if you only suspect that this may have occurred, we want you to get in touch with us. We know that, in the time directly after being hurt by a doctor, you may not be in the proper state of mind to contact an attorney, but it is important that you do so to secure any financial compensation you might be owed. Some people tend to let these cases go the longer they wait to address them.

Latona Law is here to help with that. We want to be your medical negligence lawyer in Jessup, PA. Before developing a claim with us, however, take some time to educate yourself in what medical negligence actually means, and how it differs from medical malpractice.

Medical Negligence vs. Medical Malpractice

You might find that some online resources use the terms “negligence” and “malpractice” interchangeably. While both concepts are applicable to the types of cases we practice at Latona Law, negligence is actually different from malpractice.

When we speak of medical negligence, we refer to the actions or inactions of doctors or other providers that deviate from the generally accepted standard of medical care. What is that standard? It can be difficult to define, since circumstances often determine whether a medical act is “accepted.”

To address the issue, lawyers operate under a general definition of the standard of care, which proclaims it as any action undertaken by a reasonable and educated medical provider who works in the same field as the provider in question. For an act to be considered negligent, it must have diverged from what that reasonable doctor would have done under the same circumstances. A doctor’s failure to diagnose a stroke when multiple symptoms are present is an example of medical negligence.

That failure becomes medical malpractice if it directly injures the patient. The doctor who does not diagnose the patient’s stroke could eventually be found guilty of medical malpractice if the patient suffers extensive brain damage because of that doctor’s action. The brain damage would have been preventable had the doctor been diligent enough to examine the patient thoroughly.

As in any legal situation, the details always matter, but this is an example of what a typical medical negligence and malpractice case might look like.