Your baby suffering from a birth injury is the last thing you, as a parent, would want to ever happen. But, unfortunately, it’s inevitable for some babies to incur birth injuries. So, as a parent, you probably want to know what are the odds that your baby will be able to survive a birth injury. After that, you want to know what steps to take for the welfare of your child.
There are two sets of steps to take should your child be diagnosed with birth injuries: the medical treatment steps and the legal procedure steps. Read below for the detailed explanation of the two.
Pursuing The Right Medical Treatment For Infants With Birth Injuries
The first step you should take is to ask the pediatrician about the odds that your child will survive the birth injuries they have incurred. It depends, really, on what kind of injuries your child is suffering from. Birth injuries are either temporary or permanent, so ask the pediatrician which ones apply to your child. Regardless of the most viable option for your child, it is important to remember that most birth injuries are actually preventable.
Ask the pediatrician why the birth injuries happened. Some of the causes of birth injuries are the following:
- Incompetence of the medical personnel on duty
- Fatigue of the medical personnel on duty
- Lack of experience of the medical personnel on duty
- Medical negligence
- Difficult and prolonged labor of the mother
- Accidents
The most serious of these reasons is medical negligence because it pins the blame on the doctor, nurse, or midwife who is in charge of the delivery of the child. If medical negligence can be proven, your next step would be filing a lawsuit against the medical professional guilty of the medical malpractice.
Pursuing A Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Against A Particular Medical Personnel
Before you can file a medical malpractice lawsuit against the medical personnel who was in charge during the delivery of your baby, it is important that you have all the facts ready. You need the right documents and you may need to interview the staff assisting the medical personnel on duty and ask if there were any instances of poor judgement on their part during the labor and delivery of the infant. You might encounter staff members who are reluctant to get involved in the lawsuit and may be uncooperative. Take note of that as well because it will come up during the lawsuit hearings.
You will need a birth injury lawyer to counsel you on the legal steps to take. Since you have the burden of proof, this means that it is up to you and your spouse to prove that there was definitely medical negligence. Such a process, however, can get difficult, so you need to be ready to get involved in the case for a long time.
To prove medical negligence, you need the expertise of the pediatrician of your child (or children if there were more than one baby delivered at the same time). The pediatrician will be able to inform you about the medical facts, so you need to ask the pediatrician to testify during the trial. It might even be necessary to find a medical doctor who specializes in the treatment of birth injuries to testify as well.
You also need to clarify with your spouse if you have sufficient funds to shoulder the cost of a lengthy and expensive trial. Even birth injury lawyers have to earn a living, so your lawyer will need to be paid for their services, too. If you want to get a pro bono lawyer, you should be able to find one online. This way, you can pursue the lawsuit with less financial burden.
Furthermore, consider the fact that your infant needs to be cared for even while there is an ongoing litigation, so you may need to read more about how to find the right care giver for your infant. If you don’t have enough funds to hire one, ask family and friends if they can help you out. Some might be willing to be the caregiver on duty for some hours during the day and won’t charge you anything for the help they offer.
Conclusion
Medical negligence is a difficult charge to prove in court, so be ready with an official reply to any questions the opposing counsel will fire at you during the trial. If you are convinced that there was really medical negligence involved, you need to have capable medical specialists on your side to back up your allegations. The good news is that with the right medical and legal assistance, it is possible that you will win the lawsuit and be able to claim compensation from the guilty party. You can, then, use the compensation to pay for more intensive medical treatment for your infant or infants who suffered birth injuries.
