Misdiagnosis is one of the most common forms of medical malpractice. Misdiagnosis usually occurs when a health care professional fails to or improperly diagnose a patient’s injury or llnesses.  Oftentimes, misdiagnosis can further lead to other repercussions, like erroneous prescriptions, emotional and physical trauma and even death. A medical malpractice suit only occurs when the misdiagnosis causes further injury or harm to the patient.

Misdiagnosis as Medical Malpractice

If the misdiagnosis is not something that most reasonable health care professionals would have made, it is considered as medical malpractice. In cases where the attending physician  misdiagnosed a patient due to the extreme rarity of his or her condition is not a ground of medical malpractice. Rare health conditions or newly discovered diseases not commonly experienced even by the smaller percentage of patients can cause confusion even to experienced doctors. On the other hand, if a doctor misdiagnosed a patient’s condition, which wouldn’t normally confuse most medical professionals, it is considered as medical malpractice.

Misdiagnosis can cause serious and detrimental harm to the patient. Not only will the patient undergo possibly extreme treatments, which deviate from what he or she must actually have, but the original misdiagnosed condition is also allowed to progress unnoticeably. If, for instance, a patient has cancer but the attending physician misdiagnosed the disease as something else, the patient can suffer from the long-term effects of the mistreated disease as well as the cancer. Before they know it, the cancer has spread to other places of the body before being correctly discovered. Most experienced medical professionals wouldn’t have misdiagnosed the patient’s cancer as something else.

Situations Contributing to Misdiagnosis

There are several situations that can produce misdiagnosis of a patient’s condition. Even the simplest instances, misdiagnosis can be tremendously fatal.

• A physician creates an erroneous diagnosis.
• The condition is properly diagnosed but the specific information regarding the condition is not clearly defined
• Possible underlying conditions are not diagnosed even though theimmediate condition is.
• The diagnosis of the condition is mistakenly attributed to the side-effects of the patient’s medication.