There are numerous ethical issues that influence how people practice medicine. For the most part, the practices employed by physicians reflect industry standards. For example, doctors should first do no harm and seek to use the most effective and least dangerous solutions possible when helping patients resolve problematic symptoms.
Unfortunately, doctors sometimes choose to recommend procedures based on the prestige that comes from performing them or how much they cost. They may fail to inform a patient of the risk involved in their efforts to convince them to undergo a specific kind of treatment. Did your doctor lie to you about the risks, success rate or side effects of a treatment they performed?
Failing to secure informed consent can be malpractice
You likely trusted your doctor immediately when they recommended a specific surgical procedure or outpatient therapy to help resolve the symptoms that brought you to their office. However, the treatment didn’t go as they said it would.
Maybe you experienced negative side effects or complications. Perhaps you didn’t respond well to treatment at all, so it failed to resolve your underlying medical concerns. When you start looking into the treatment, you realize that your exact outcome is one of the most commonly reported.
You believe you would not have chosen to undergo the treatment had you known the possible side effects or the surprisingly high failure rate. Medical industry standards require informed consent when doctors recommend invasive procedures, surgeries, dangerous drugs or experimental medical care.
Unfortunately, plenty of doctors will gloss over this obligation, possibly by having patients sign informed consent forms without ever discussing the possible drawbacks of their recommendations with that patient. If your doctor did not properly educate you about the risks of the treatment they recommended, you may have grounds for a medical malpractice claim.
Holding your doctor accountable for medical malpractice can compensate you for your losses and potentially force them to change how they practice medicine.
