Seven of the Most Common Types of Medical Malpractice

Anesthesia errors may include improper dosage, improper administration, failure to monitor, and equipment failure. These errors can lead to serious injury including organ failure, heart attack, paralysis, brain damage, and death.

Birth injury may include cerebral palsy, brachial pelxus injury, brain damage, and bone fractures. These injuries can lead to a lifetime of struggle, require long-term care, and may prove impossible to overcome.

Serious or fatal injury in an emergency room may be the result of excessive waiting times, improper diagnosis, inadequate level of care, surgical mistakes, and several other factors. These injuries may exacerbate the existing problem or cause entirely new problems of their own. They may also result in death.

The CDC reports that 1 in 25 patients contracts an infection while in the hospital, killing 75,000 people every year. The most common hospital infections are pneumonia, surgical site infections, and gastrointestinal infections, though any type of infection is possible when proper care is not taken to prevent it.

Too much or too little medication, failure to account for allergic reactions, administering the wrong type of medication, and failure to monitor a patient following the administration of medication are some of the leading causes of injury and death related to this type of malpractice. Medication errors can occur in the hospital, at the doctors office, and even in your own home.

Failure to diagnose cancer, meningitis, and other potentially fatal diseases can make treatment impossible and cut short the life of the patient. Ordering the wrong tests, refusing to listen to a patient's concerns or symptoms, and hubris may all factor into this deadly type of medical malpractice.

Some of the most common types of surgical error are wrong site surgery, operating on the wrong patient, performing the wrong surgery, and being careless during the procedure. Surgical error may result in organ damage, brain damage, paralysis, infection, and death.