You might have come across the terms medical malpractice and medical negligence, but have you ever wondered if they are the same thing, or is there a difference between them. It would be good to know the difference between them if you ever are in need of an expert like Dolan Dobrinsky Rosenblum Bluestein, LLP to handle a case against a medical facility or professional.
These terms are more often than not used interchangeably however, they are different. Let’s understand how you can distinguish between them.
Negligence
When it comes to personal injury law, negligence is a very important concept that determines if a person was being careless or reckless and their action that has ended up injuring someone.
To prove negligence in any case, it needs to be established that someone has a legal duty that binds them to protect you, and that duty has been breached and resulted in your injury.
Medical negligence
For proving any negligence in a case there are four important pillars: Duty, breach, causation, and damages. If all these important elements along with a few qualifiers are present in a medical case then it is a case of medical negligence. Under medical negligence, you accuse a medical professional or an institution. To establish that there was a breach of duty, you will have to prove that the person who provided their service is responsible for the service that was below the medical standard of care if it was somebody else with the same proficiency instead, you would have received better care.
In short, in a medical negligence case, the lawyer aims at proving that the doctor or some other professional made a mistake that harm the client.
Medical malpractice
In medical malpractice also, proving the four important elements of negligence is a requirement for establishing a case. However, it is different from medical negligence, in a case of malpractice, the lawyer tries to prove the negligent action that took place was intentional. So, in medical malpractice, the medical professional intentionally made a mistake which resulted in hurting the patient.
The bottom line
If we look at it in a simple manner, it can be said that malpractice is a more grave offense than negligence and the main difference between both of them is intent, while the former is intentional, the latter is a genuine mistake.
