Chattanooga Failure to Diagnose Law Firm

Failure to diagnose is a term that is used in both the legal and medical community when a medical professional fails to provide a patient with a timely and current diagnosis. Patients who seek medical care rely upon the skills, knowledge and experience of physicians and medical specialists and they expect to receive the correct diagnosis so that they can move forward with their treatment without minimal suffering. However, in cases where a medical professional fails to diagnose a patient or gives a misdiagnosis, patients can incur additional symptoms and their overall health may suffer. When this happens, the patient is truly helpless and may feel they will never recover or regain their strength.
Believe it or not, failure to diagnose is quite common. In fact, it is the most common type of medical misdiagnosis. Many medical malpractice lawsuits stem from failure to diagnose or delayed diagnosis cases. These cases are filed by thousands of patients each year who have serious medical conditions like cancer, heart abnormalities, strokes, brain injuries, hypertension and diabetes. All of these conditions are known to advance rather quickly and can eventually lead to death if not appropriately treated.

Things You Need to Tell Your Doctor

In most cases involving failure to diagnose, doctors are responsible for the misdiagnosis. However, there are cases where patients contribute to the misdiagnosis by failing to tell their doctors of all of their symptoms or by trying to diagnose themselves. For this reason, when you visit the doctor for an annual checkup or because you are experiencing painful symptoms, you should try to:

• Accurately describe your symptoms
• Tell your doctor how long you have been experiencing symptoms
• Describe any pain you are feeling and pinpoint where the pain is in your body
• Tell your doctor about any medications you are taking and list any over the counter medicines you consume
• Report any irregularities you have noticed
• Describe only the symptoms you have and do not go into symptoms you do not have – do not attempt to self-diagnose – it will lead to confusion for both you and your doctor

Tennessee Failure to Diagnose Lawyer
Helping Victims of Failure to Diagnose and Negligence in Chattanooga

When you have sustained a serious injury at the hands of a medical professional, you should always speak with a failure to diagnose attorney who is experienced in personal injury law and who is prepared to deal with medical related cases like Attorney Alexander W. Gothard.