When you go see the doctor, it’s important to remember that negative outcomes are possible. In some cases, there are simply risks to different types of surgery, for example. Or there are diseases that doctors can treat, but there’s absolutely no guarantee that they can cure them.
People sometimes assume that a doctor’s failure to cure a patient means that the doctor made a mistake. They may have assumed that a positive outcome was a given, so the family members and the person themselves can feel very frustrated when it doesn’t work out this way.
Was the doctor negligent?
The real question to ask is whether or not you got the type of medical care that you should expect. Everyone deserves a general standard of care, which must be adhered to, and they deserve to have a medical professional who is not negligent and doesn’t make unnecessary mistakes. People should never have to experience the ramifications of these errors, which mean the care they get is less than they could reasonably expect or what they would’ve gotten at a different medical facility.
So, if a doctor was negligent and offered substandard care, and then there was a negative outcome, that could be an example of medical malpractice. A positive outcome should have been achieved, but it was not due to the doctor‘s actions or inaction.
But if a doctor offers proper care and simply can’t achieve the positive results that the patient was hoping for, that in and of itself does not necessarily mean that malpractice occurred.
It’s important to understand the difference between the two types of outcomes discussed here, and you also need to know what legal options you have if it does appear that the doctor was at fault and medical malpractice occurred.