The hospital is often a defendant in a medical malpractice case. Their own employees may have made a mistake that could have harmed your health in any aspect of your medical treatment. The hospital may have been the employer of the doctor who injured you, and the hospital can be vicariously liable for your injuries. Either way, if you can prove that the hospital itself committed malpractice (such as not maintaining equipment) or it employed someone else who was negligent, they can have a legal responsibility to compensate you for your damages. These damages may include emotional distress because being the victim of negligence can harm your psyche in many ways.
If you have suffered emotional distress due to medical malpractice in a hospital, you should reach out to a trusted Tysons Corner personal injury lawyer as soon as possible.
How You May Suffer from Emotional Distress After Medical Malpractice
There may be many ways that you can be dealing with emotional distress in the wake of a medical malpractice case. Post-traumatic stress disorder is the most common form of emotional distress in personal injury cases. Here, you can be under extreme stress resulting from the medical malpractice, often resulting in the form of nightmares and flashbacks to the incident. PTSD can remain with you for the rest of your life, and it can affect your ability to work or have normal and healthy interpersonal relationships.
Other forms of emotional distress include:
- Loss of appetite
- Nightmares and the lack of ability
- Depression
- Loss of memory
- Increased aggression
Your Damages in a Medical Malpractice Case
Your medical malpractice lawsuit damages can break out into three general categories:
- Economic damages compensate you for the financial losses associated with your injury, such as medical expenses and lost income
- Non-economic damages pay you back for the ordeal that comes from your physical injuries, whether it was actual pain or the mental health effects of being injured
- Punitive damages are very rare, but they are a monetary penalty assessed to the hospital to make an example out of them for grossly negligent or reckless actions
It is generally not possible to sue a hospital for emotional distress as an independent cause of action. You would need to have suffered some type of physical injury to also file a claim for emotional distress. However, once you have suffered any type of physical injury, you can also include a claim for emotional distress. Most cases of medical malpractice result in a form of emotional distress.
Emotional Distress Is One Form of Non-Economic Damages
Your non-economic damages will include things like pain and suffering and emotional distress. You can be suffering from certain effects of the medical malpractice case. For example, if you have woken up from a surgery and learned that the doctor operated on the wrong body part, you may be suffering from significant emotional distress. Other aspects of medical malpractice can also affect your emotions going forward.
Get Mental Health Treatment to Document Your Emotional Distress
It is essential that you take every step possible to document the emotional distress that you have suffered from medical malpractice. The best thing that you can do is to get help from a mental health professional. Getting treatment can lead to an improvement in your condition. In addition, you have an obligation to take steps to mitigate your damages to the fullest extent possible. Here, mitigation means that you have done something to help yourself in the wake of the emotional distress that you find yourself dealing with after your injury. The insurance company may not want to pay you for this aspect of your harm if they do not see you taking steps to help yourself.
In addition, seeing a mental health professional not only helps your emotional wellness but also gains you the supporting evidence that you need to prove you are suffering from emotional distress. The insurance company will never believe just your word alone when you are relaying that you are dealing with something that is subjective in nature. They want to see something down on paper from a licensed treatment provider. Even then, the insurance company may still try to dispute your damages.
The Defendant May Dispute Your Emotional Distress Claims
You can expect there to be a significant amount of disagreement about the extent of your emotional distress and the value of your claim. It is hard to come up with a value for something that cannot easily be reduced to a specific dollar figure. That is the exact reason why you hire a medical malpractice lawyer to help with your case. They will review your case, and they will work with expert witnesses as necessary to determine how much money you should seek.
You will need to prove that there was medical negligence to be in a position to recover any financial compensation for your injuries. A medical malpractice attorney can review your case and help determine whether the doctor failed to live up to their standard of care. Once you have obtained your medical records (these are your property, and the hospital will need to provide you with these records on your request), your medical malpractice lawyer may work with expert witnesses to build your case that will show that the doctor or hospital failed to live up to their duty of care.
If your attorney can make a persuasive argument establishing medical negligence, you may be able to negotiate a settlement agreement for emotional damages. An attorney can take your case to trial and win, a jury will quantify your damages (both economic and non-economic) and make a financial award.
Medical Malpractice Attorneys Are Ready to Support You
Medical malpractice cases are not always easy to win. Not only do you need to show that the doctor failed to live up to their standard of care, but you also need to back up the damages that you are claiming. If you are seeking non-economic damages, you will need records that support all of your claims for the jury to award you all the damages that you are seeking.
Your medical malpractice attorney works to quantify your damages so you can be fully paid for them when you can prove your case. It is seriously risky to try calculating your own damages to know exactly how much to seek in compensation. Your medical malpractice lawyer will fight for every dollar. Don’t hesitate to call a medical malpractice attorney today.