A big part of any doctor’s job, perhaps even the most important part, is to diagnose their patients correctly. Only if a patient is correctly diagnosed can effective treatment be started. If a patient receives a wrong diagnosis, then that can set off a chain of events—be it treatment or non-treatment—that can result in some very bad outcomes for the patient. One of the first things that doctors learned in medical school is to perform something called a differential diagnosis. This requires them, when assessing a patient, to consider multiple alternative diagnoses to explain the symptoms. For example, a headache can be from a cold, or it can be from a stroke. Knowing which one can make all the difference in terms of outcome.
After all possible medical explanations for the symptoms are gathered by the doctor, the differential diagnosis process requires that doctor to conduct a process of elimination by using evidence such as symptoms, patient history, and medical tests. The goal is to focus on the most severe possible medical conditions and then to test for and possibly eliminate those and work your way down. In my earlier example, then, if a stroke is on the differential diagnosis, then because it’s so life-threatening, it’s important to immediately test for it through imaging like CT scans and not to jump to a cold explanation. It’s easy to see how a failure to perform an appropriate differential diagnosis can have bad outcomes. That being said, it’s important to know that not all misdiagnosis amount to negligence. Sometimes even the best doctors get it wrong. In the context of a medical malpractice claim, usually only qualified medical experts are able to tell if a misdiagnosis amounts to negligence.
Medical malpractice lawyers like myself regularly work with these experts to get patients the answers they need in the event of a possible misdiagnosis. So if you feel as though you’ve been a victim of medical negligence or medical misdiagnosis, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me for a free consultation.
