If you feel as if your experience, either in a hospital setting, in the workplace, or in another professional situation, could be called malpractice and are therefore considering hiring a lawyer, then you have definitely clicked on the right article.
Continue reading to learn whether or not your own personal experience of malpractice constitutes a lawsuit, so you know whether you can take it forward or not.
What Does Malpractice Actually Mean?
Essentially, the occurrence of malpractice refers to the illegal, negligent, or, indeed, simply improper behavior of a trusted professional who is often in a position of authority and the person under their care coming to harm because of this.
Although when one person experiences such a situation, and they are easily able to brush it aside and quickly forget it even happened, others can be intensely troubled by the situation, and these people are more than entitled to find out what they can do about it.
Medical Malpractice
From an established Cerebral Palsy attorney who will be fully versed in the complicated and often conflicting needs of the individual to lawyers specializing in problems caused by questionable medical practices with newborn babies and mothers, the field of medical malpractice is vast, to say the least.
As a general rule, the situation you have experienced must have had damaging, to varying degrees, consequences or have caused harm or injury in the following ways, to name but a few:
- Suffering with enduring hardship
- Loss of earnings resulting in debt issues
- Pain and suffering
- A temporary or even permanent disability
The most common medical malpractice lawsuits center around injuries endured in childbirth, errors with prescribing drugs and other forms of medication, delayed or entirely misdiagnosed conclusions, and a complete failure to treat a patient.
Workplace Malpractice
Workplace malpractice, often alternatively referred to as workplace wrongdoing, is often covered up or, indeed, more pertinently, entirely ignored by employees and heads of departments or the simple fact that the individual does not want the hassle of raising the issue.
Workplace malpractice could involve a breach of policies, procedures, or codes, poor practice, failure to supply PPE (personal protective equipment), or even complete negligence by the employer.
White Collar Malpractice
A lesser-known form of malpractice is called ‘white collar malpractice’ and specifically deals with wrongdoing in the world of accounting and finance.
Perhaps an accountant is ‘cooking the books’ in exchange for cash in hand, inside trading is occurring on a regular basis even though this is simply not permitted, or maybe the accountant is unwittingly, yet repeatedly, making huge mistakes that negatively affect the company.
Legal Malpractice
Finally, the other significant type of professional malpractice is related to the legal sector and essentially occurs when a professional attorney, police officer, sheriff, or other law enforcer behaves inappropriately or entirely illegally.
Legal malpractice has come into the forefront of casual discussions amongst friends and through media outlets, too, due to the controversy in this country involving the conduct of various individuals while they were on the job.