Failure to Diagnose

Medical negligence occurs when a treating healthcare professional (i.e., doctor, nurse, etc.) violates the standard of care, and in doing so, causes you to suffer injuries. The standard of care violation is what separates a mere mistake from negligence.

The standard of care can vary depending on the circumstances and other factors, such as the treating healthcare professional’s specialized training, your illness/condition/injury, and the tools that the healthcare professional had at their disposal.

Confused? Consider the following example.

Suppose that you are experiencing consistent headaches, nausea, and related symptoms over the course of months. You go to a generalist doctor, and they tell you that it’s probably just due to a lack of sleep, or due to stress at work. They do not perform any significant diagnostic tests.

A year later, your symptoms get worse. You go straight to a neurologist, who performs a comprehensive battery of tests and diagnoses you with brain cancer. The cancer is in an advanced stage, however, and the surgery may cause significant and lifelong impairments.

Given the circumstances, it seems obvious that the first doctor failed to diagnose your cancer when it was in its earlier stages, and that the failure was a violation of the standard of care. Though the first doctor may not have been able to identify the problem without further testing, they should have at least sent you to a specialist or ordered an MRI/CT scan.

When the courts evaluate the doctor’s negligence, they will try to determine what the standard of care was. They will compare the doctor’s decision not to order further tests or send you to a specialist with what other, similarly-situated doctors (i.e., similar training, background, and experience) would have done. If a similarly-situated doctor would have conducted themselves differently, then the defendant may have committed medical negligence.