Denver Failure to Monitor Attorneys
Hold Colorado Hospitals, Doctors, and Nurses Accountable After Malpractice
When you are admitted to the hospital, every staff member who handles your case is expected to keep diligent records of your condition and their treatment. Are you stable? Are you at risk for certain complications? It’s their job to know. In certain situations, such as post-surgery or during a high-risk childbirth, continuous monitoring is even more important. When medical providers fail to monitor a patient’s condition or fail to understand it, allowing the patient to suffer additional injury, they have committed medical malpractice.
Our job at Leventhal Puga Braley P.C. is to go after negligent medical providers in order to provide justice to their injured patients – our clients. If you suspect a doctor or nurse failed to monitor you or ignored you and your injury or illness got worse as a result, please call us at (303) 759-9945 to set up a no-cost consultation. Our award-winning medical malpractice trial lawyers will be able to advise you on what to do next.
What Is Failure to Monitor?
Monitoring your condition is a critical part of patient care in any clinical setting. A failure to monitor can occur in a number of ways. Examples include:
- A doctor rushes through the initial assessment of a patient’s trauma injuries and does not follow up to ensure no other injuries present later.
- A hospital discharges a patient too early after surgery without providing aftercare instructions, leaving the patient to develop a life-threatening injury at home.
- A nurse does not continuously monitor a baby’s heartbeat during labor, fails to notice the child is in distress and suffering oxygen deprivation, ending in brain injury.
- An anesthesiologist fails to continuously monitor a patient’s vitals while the patient is under anesthesia during surgery, leading to heart failure or brain injury.
Often, monitoring a patient before and after a procedure is just as critical as the treatment itself. When doctors fail to monitor, they fail to diagnose, to treat, and to inform patients of surgical risks or instructions for at-home care. These failures may be medical malpractice.
Medical Consequences of Failure to Monitor a Patient
Every moment that a patient is under direct medical supervision can be critical. Failure to monitor a patient could have severe consequences for patients and their families. This may include acute injury, death, and medical conditions such as cerebral palsy that require a lifetime of treatment and medical intervention. Caretaker negligence and inattention during inpatient or outpatient treatment can result in:
- Birth injuries
- Wrongful death
- Traumatic brain injury
- Spinal cord injury
- Severe pain and suffering
- Astronomical healthcare costs: This may involve an extended hospital stay in addition to aftercare treatment.
- Physical therapy and rehabilitation: Occupational and physical therapists may be required to for the patient to resume normal activities.
- Reduced quality of life: Physical, emotional, and intellectual impairment may be permanent.
- Lost wages: The patient may undergo a long period of rehabilitation. It is also possible that they will no longer have the capacity to work or perform their job at the same level of competence as before.
Holding Someone Responsible for Failing to Monitor a Patient
To prove a claim of medical malpractice, your attorney will have to demonstrate that one or more care providers breached their duty of care to look after you or loved one and this resulted in some type of injury to the patient. Your attorney will also have to establish that the victim suffered damages as a result of this caretaker negligence.
Because doctors are very busy and have a number of patients to see, the job of monitoring a patient’s ongoing condition is often assigned to other hospital staff or healthcare providers. Checking the patient’s vitals and watching for changes in the patient’s condition may involve many people who come and go at different times. These tasks must be coordinated, and constant communication between caretakers is vital to ensure that a lapse in care does not occur.
If the standard of care is not met due to insufficient patient monitoring, a malpractice attorney will investigate the medical records to determine whose negligence is responsible. This may include:
- Doctors who fail to observe symptoms of distress or vital sign changes
- Hospital administrators responsible for staffing, scheduling, and coordination of activities
- Nurses who are not responsive to potential complications
- Anesthesiologists who fail to make the proper adjustments
- Obstetricians, nurses, or midwifes who fail to detect indications of fetal distress
- Hospital staff who fail to respond to changes in a patient’s condition
Work With an Experienced Denver Medical Malpractice Lawyer
Generally, you may take legal action when a medical professional does not meet the standard of care expected of a medical professional in the given situation, and this failure causes you injury. If you believe a medical provider failed to monitor your condition, or your loved one’s condition, contact our legal team as quickly as possible.
Leventhal Puga Braley P.C. will work to determine exactly what happened in your case. We are nationally recognized for our medical malpractice verdicts and patient safety advocacy. No one deserves the physical and emotional costs of additional medical treatment due to a doctor’s failure to pay attention, and we are here to take care of you after a doctor does not.
If you would like to speak to a top medical malpractice attorney about your situation, please give our Denver office a call at (303) 759-9945. There is no cost for the consultation, and we accept cases nationwide. If we represent you, you will owe us no fee until we get just compensation for you.
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