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Medical professionals and healthcare staff are entrusted with ensuring your and your child's safety during birth. When their failure results in a birth injury, you may be entitled to compensation. Knowing what constitutes a birth injury and what care medical staff are responsible for can help you understand what you are owed.
Birth injuries can happen for a variety of reasons at different points of time during pregnancy and childbirth. Learn the mistakes medical professionals can make so you can keep yourself safe or know when to pursue a legal claim.
Failure to Screen or Test
A healthcare team’s responsibility during pregnancy and childbirth is to ensure that any health conditions that could harm you or the child are treated or appropriately addressed. Conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity require greater attention to ensure proper childbirth.
If your doctor is not currently addressing these issues, you can raise them yourself and demand to know what steps they will take to mitigate complications. When your medical team fails to address these conditions, and then these conditions lead to a birth injury, you may have the right to pursue a legal claim.
Medical Errors During Delivery
Labor can be intensive and can require quick decisions. Failure to make timely decisions, such as ordering medically-induced labor or an emergency cesarean section after prolonged labor, can result in a birth injury.
The medical team may also improperly use tools, such as forceps, that can harm the child, leading to bruising or greater injury. Utilizing too much force can also result in injury, leading to lifelong conditions such as cerebral palsy.
Improper use of tools, failure to act, and excessive use of force are common medical errors during delivery.
When to Contact an Attorney
A birth injury that results due to the failure of the medical staff may be pursued legally.
The attorneys at Kline & Specter have obtained hundreds of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements in birth injury cases. With the most lawyers with a medical degree in the country, they are uniquely situated when it comes to medical-legal claims.
Kline & Specter provides free and confidential evaluations of potential cases. Kline & Specter handles cases in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and New York. For cases outside those states, the law firm works with local attorneys in each state as applicable.
To know if you have a valid legal claim, contact our offices for a free case evaluation at 215-772-1000.