Medical malpractice refers to a broad range of legal negligence in the administration of health care. Medical malpractice, or healthcare malpractice, means that some sort of accident in the setting of healthcare delivery caused an injury. It is a form of personal injury that can result from a physician's error just as well as it can result from a nursing home error or hospital error. Any type of provider can make an error from nurses to chiropractors to podiatrists, pharmacists and dentists. The error can be of commission (the doctor does something wrong like giving the wrong drug or an error of omission such as failing to give a drug when one was needed.

Often times people who think they may have been harmed by a healthcare provider are unable to convince their family lawyer to take their case. There is therefore a large number of people out there who have a well founded idea that they have been injured but no recourse to access the legal system. It is simply the fact that many family lawyers simply do not know or understand medical malpractice much less medical practice. Upon reviewing their client's claim the lawyer will not know how to properly determine if there was medical malpractice and probably won't do the most logical thing which is to hire a medical expert to review the matter with him.

If you feel that something may have been done to you in the healthcare arena that has harmed you or that simply doesn't make sense then it is best for you to contact a medical expert trained to properly review such matters. It is just as important to know if there wasn't malpractice as if there was. It is also important to know that the clock is always ticking on your claim and you do not want to chance being locked out of court for failing to timely file. Most such expert firms are national so your exact location is not important.

Here are some tips to avoid medical malpractice:

Do not over use the medical system. Many people, for some reason, have the idea that they are entitled to be in perfect health with no pains or limitations. Our Country is drowned with ads that falsely tell people that every little thing can be perfect if they take many drugs per day. Guess what, this isn't so. Humans have aches and pains and maladies of all sorts. Many people get in more trouble by becoming medical malpractice victims when they "dare" the system. By this I mean, when you over use the system thinking that there is a cure for everything, as opposed to facing reality and learning to cope with some imperfections in appearance or health, you're "daring" the system to find an opportunity to hurt you worse. As marvelous as medical practice has become it is still relatively basic. The bottom line is, as it always has been, that doctors simply assist in nature in helping you and that medicine's knowledge of science is still somewhat superficial. In short,where possible, stay away and be very, very careful.

Check on what's being done to you and why in any way you can. A common problem for example is a pharmacy giving you the wrong drug. You should never take a drug unless to you can confirm the bottle it came from if it was re-bottled from the original bottle. Or, pills can be looked up on line for pictures that you can match. Many pills are generics made by different pharmaceutical houses and all of the different pictures of pills are available on line. This is important because you could get a different generic from month to month. You do not have to be antagonistic to the doctor but you can politely help yourself as well as the doctor by avoiding a simple error.