When we at Faiella & Gulden, P.A., represent patients in serious medical malpractice cases, we do so with the belief that bringing these cases can make medical care safer for every patient. And we do so because we believe that medical care needs to be safer than it is.
Let’s look at some quick examples:
- At Rhode Island Hospital, surgical staff operated on the wrong side of patients’ brains. Three separate times. In one year. The excuse offered by some attending doctors and nurses? That they were not trained on “how to use a checklist.”
- A recent tragedy at an Omaha children’s hospital where a nurse inserted the wrong medication into a 19-month-old patient’s central line, killing her.
- Surgical fires burn from 550–600 patients a year.
- Foreign objects are left inside patients’ bodies at a rate of about 1,500 per year.
- And, one of the most common medical errors: misdiagnosis. For example, a woman was told a lump in her jaw was cancer and she had a few months to live—a time period which could be extended by removing the side of her jaw. She agreed. But, it turned out that she never had cancer at all—she was disfigured and went through five surgeries because her results were mixed up with another patient’s.
In the United States, medical errors are the third leading cause of death, right after cancer and heart disease. A 2016 study by Johns Hopkins University, home to one of the nation’s leading health systems, estimated that 10% of Americans—about 250,000 people—are killed every year by preventable medical mistakes. However, this number does not include those patients who are merely maimed, have their lives irrevocably changed, or who lose vital physical and mental functions as a result of these medical mistakes.
Fortunately, there is a system in place to prevent future errors by giving those who are injured the right to bring their injuries before a Florida jury and seek judgment. By taking careless physicians, nurses, and hospital administrators to trial in a court of law, victims and their families can help prevent the death and suffering of future patients, and can also be provided with the resources that they need to heal. Most significantly, those healthcare providers involved in causing these injuries will learn from these mistakes and failures, since medical malpractice cases ensure that proper attention is paid to how the injury occurred, and how to prevent it in the future.
The conviction that bringing malpractice cases can prevent future injury and death is at the heart of why we do what we do. As medical malpractice attorneys, we at Faiella & Gulden, P.A., have this goal: if we can save just one person from a devastating medical error in the future, then we have done our jobs. It could be our fathers, our sisters, our friends, or our neighbors on that table next time. That’s how we treat all of our cases, and it’s why we fight so hard for patient safety.
Trying malpractice cases is how justice is achieved, and how healthcare is made safer for everyone going forward.
If you’ve been seriously hurt by a medical professional or institution that should have known better, call attorneys Elizabeth Faiella, Peter Gulden, and Rebecca Gulden at Faiella & Gulden, P.A. We require no fees to discuss your potential medical malpractice case.
