Many of us are familiar with television and movies featuring crusading attorneys passionately fighting for their client in court. Yet attorneys aren’t experts in all fields, and sometimes they require assistance from an outside expert. When it comes to mistakes made by doctors in treating patients, medical malpractice experts are the best bet to explain why their victim was wronged and should receive damages. Here are four important contributions a medical malpractice expert can make. Explaining Proper Care Even if a medical treatment went wrong, it does not mean malpractice has taken place. Many medical procedures are unpredictable, and doctors will warn patients about the risks of certain treatments. In these cases, the patients will sign consent forms. To prove malpractice has occurred, it must be proven that the physician did not act according to the accepted standard of medical care. Medical malpractice experts will explain how a typical competent doctor would have performed in the same situation at issue in the courtroom and give opinions as to whether the performing doctor had lived up to that standard. If they had not, that means errors would have occurred in treatment that should not have taken place. Using Facts It is very likely that neither victims of malpractice nor their attorneys understand all the facts about the procedure that was given to the victims, or the field of medicine associated with the treatment. Medical malpractice experts are tasked with bringing their expertise to the case, to explain what went wrong and determining whether a malpractice suit can succeed. They then have to give medical facts to the court that relate to the case. To bolster their case, they may bring visual evidence like medical board guidelines or medical publications. Distilling Knowledge Medical matters can be very complicated. A medical legal expert has to be familiar with all the elements of the medical procedure at issue, to be able to explain what went wrong and what should have gone right, and to make it all understandable to a jury that may all be totally new to this field of medicine. In addition, a medical malpractice expert will have to comment on a number of different fields that interact with the case, such as any medical, legal, procedural, regulatory and engineering issues that are involved. Any expert that is unprepared to explain these matters will not come across as credible to the jury. Establishing Harm The opposing party will try to establish that the patient’s harm was not the result of the physician’s actions. Any number of factors can affect a medical treatment, and it’s possible the actions of the practicing doctor did not directly cause the patient’s harm. A medical expert witness must demonstrate the likelihood that the doctor’s incompetence led to an outcome that was unnecessary. Medical malpractice experts must also explain why other factors involved in the treatment did not damage the patient’s health and thus do not take away responsibility from the physician. The expertise of a medical malpractice expert can be invaluable to a victim of malpractice in explaining to a jury how the treatment went wrong, establishing that harm occurred because of incompetence or substandard performance, and answering legal and procedural issues that may come up in the case.
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