Medical Malpractice

Due to negligence of some doctors and some pharmaceuticals, they may unknowingly give wrong prescriptions or sell drugs to patients. Sometimes, defective drugs are accidentally being processed by some companies and sell them to the open market. When the drug maker Actavis, Inc. processed the Digitek, a powerful heart drug, they discovered that the tablets they are producing were twice as thick as intended and thus this doubled the dose for patients' risk as the said medicine is potent enough and the drug attacks the brain and the heart. Even celebrities were victims of negligence of selling and marketing dangerous drugs. Heath Ledger passed away on February 6, 2008 due to accidental abuse of drug medications. He was given six drugs of painkillers, sleep aid and sedatives that his body could not handle. Who do you think are responsible for these kinds of deaths?

It is the pharmaceutical companies as well as the medical examiners' responsibility to take care of their patients. If the patient had suffered temporary or permanent disability due to carelessness of pharmaceutical companies in producing drugs saleable in the open market, they should also be the one responsible for the improvement of the patient's condition. These pharmaceutical companies or medical examiners are accountable of all the drug prescriptions' bills, laboratories, radiographs report, surgeries and chiropractic care so long it is considered as caused by the faulty medicine. Since the medical condition may affect the patient's ability to work in the open labor market, the pharmaceutical companies should pay the patient's work salary. There are people who are educated in apportioning the patient's entitlement for their payment. It could be lawyers or someone from the court. The payment could be a 'compromise'/lump sum money or could be paid in an installment basis until a certain period of time whatever the patient's decision. Many factors should be considered in apportioning these payments such as part of body affected, psychiatric concerns, inability to work, salary of the previous work and future medical care of the patient.

If the patient is willing to sue the drug company, the necessity of hiring an attorney is necessary. The attorney will represent the claimant in processing the paperwork. Representing oneself is not a good idea even if one is knowledgeable in filing a lawsuit. Also, a workers' compensation case of the United States is different in drug law cases. The patient should research a good lawyer with proven experience in handling cases of defective drug complaints. The victim is also encouraged to seek class action lawsuits and organizations in which he/she can join a group whom he/she share the same problem complaints. It would be better if that group is banding together in filing charges against a specific drug company. This would be beneficial to the whole group seeking justice for a pharmaceutical company who had had a malpractice of prescribing or producing dangerous drugs.

The next step is to collect information to all the injured or harmed patients in order to win the drug lawsuit case. The medical records, reports, and witnesses are a big help in proving that there is a negative effect to the health of the patients due to defective drugs made by a pharmaceutical company. Medical reports and records of each patient are necessary to be gathered to prove the claim. What is difficult in this scenario is establishing the facts that the patient's health became detrimental because of a specific drug.