How are award amounts determined in medical malpractice lawsuits when the harm is primarily mental distress?
Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at
11:42 am
joe friday’s grrl asked:
What is factored in and how do attorneys determine the amounts they sue for on a client’s behalf in medical malpractice suits, and how might these amounts differ if the patient is put through more psychological trauma than physical? What about the length of time that the person is affected by the mistakes made? I ask this question because I was recently released after a three-day stay in a state mental hospital. I went to a local hospital ER with a physical complaint of equilibrium problems, resulting in several falls at home. Due to a miscommunication between physicians at a shift change, and as I unknowingly slept overnight, I wound up being involuntarily committed to a horrible mental institution with violent and severely mentally ill women. I woke up to face sheriff deputies at my bedside, who shackled me and carried me away in a blacked-out vehicle that looked like something for stray dogs. As I was taken away, no one would answer my questions, call my family or my doctors. I was treated like a non-person. I was on a mental ward for a hellish, mandatory, minimum stay of three days, after which time I was suddenly released , the doctors having determined there was nothing wrong with me, but not before subjecting me to some awful drugs that made me FEEL crazy and rendered me unable to move or call out for over twelve hours overnight in a locked room. My physical symptoms, which turned out to be a bad reaction to an OTC drug I’d taken, resolved on their own while I was in the place. Right now, I am going back and forth between feeling numb and being livid. I requested my records from the ER and went to the magistrate’s office to get a copy of the commitment papers. I was stunned to learn that a doctor had signed it saying I had a plan to commit ******* by overdose! No such thing was ever said by me prescription drugs without prescription to a single person, and the doctor whose name was on the document was someone who never even saw or spoke to me!
To clarify: I hadn’t overdosed at all, and they DID know the medication I’d taken in low dose for three days. It just didn’t agree with me, made me dizzy and screwed with my coordination. Symptoms began to resolve as soon as I missed two doses. The entire time in the ER I was coherent, calm, and able to describe the symptoms I was having, which were not even severe, just scaring me to death. At a shift change, the new attending came into my room, introduced herself, asked me about my symptoms, and got a puzzled look on her face when I answered. She asked, Have you thought about or attempted *******? I was in shock. I told her, NO!!! Absolutely not! Not EVER!!! She then said, Okay, there’s been a mistake. I’ll be back. Only she never came back. In the records I got from the ER, her name appears nowhere, and she made not a single note. But is it HER name that’s on the commitment request, where she wrote: Patient has clumsiness with plan to overdose.?! Only the clumsiness was fact.
What is factored in and how do attorneys determine the amounts they sue for on a client’s behalf in medical malpractice suits, and how might these amounts differ if the patient is put through more psychological trauma than physical? What about the length of time that the person is affected by the mistakes made? I ask this question because I was recently released after a three-day stay in a state mental hospital. I went to a local hospital ER with a physical complaint of equilibrium problems, resulting in several falls at home. Due to a miscommunication between physicians at a shift change, and as I unknowingly slept overnight, I wound up being involuntarily committed to a horrible mental institution with violent and severely mentally ill women. I woke up to face sheriff deputies at my bedside, who shackled me and carried me away in a blacked-out vehicle that looked like something for stray dogs. As I was taken away, no one would answer my questions, call my family or my doctors. I was treated like a non-person. I was on a mental ward for a hellish, mandatory, minimum stay of three days, after which time I was suddenly released , the doctors having determined there was nothing wrong with me, but not before subjecting me to some awful drugs that made me FEEL crazy and rendered me unable to move or call out for over twelve hours overnight in a locked room. My physical symptoms, which turned out to be a bad reaction to an OTC drug I’d taken, resolved on their own while I was in the place. Right now, I am going back and forth between feeling numb and being livid. I requested my records from the ER and went to the magistrate’s office to get a copy of the commitment papers. I was stunned to learn that a doctor had signed it saying I had a plan to commit ******* by overdose! No such thing was ever said by me prescription drugs without prescription to a single person, and the doctor whose name was on the document was someone who never even saw or spoke to me!
To clarify: I hadn’t overdosed at all, and they DID know the medication I’d taken in low dose for three days. It just didn’t agree with me, made me dizzy and screwed with my coordination. Symptoms began to resolve as soon as I missed two doses. The entire time in the ER I was coherent, calm, and able to describe the symptoms I was having, which were not even severe, just scaring me to death. At a shift change, the new attending came into my room, introduced herself, asked me about my symptoms, and got a puzzled look on her face when I answered. She asked, Have you thought about or attempted *******? I was in shock. I told her, NO!!! Absolutely not! Not EVER!!! She then said, Okay, there’s been a mistake. I’ll be back. Only she never came back. In the records I got from the ER, her name appears nowhere, and she made not a single note. But is it HER name that’s on the commitment request, where she wrote: Patient has clumsiness with plan to overdose.?! Only the clumsiness was fact.
