What is our legal recourse if my daughter had surgery and the hospital forgot to remove the cap from the pain block medication and sent her home?

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What is our legal recourse if my daughter had surgery and the hospital forgot to remove the cap from the pain block medication and sent her home?

My daughter had shoulder surgery and her pain medication was to be administered through a IV tube that was inserted in her neck. A ball of the medication was to drip through the tube over night. The pain was so bad that we had to return to hospital in the morning. We were informed that the cap was not taken off the ball into the IV, so no pain medication was able to drip out. My daughter suffered for 16 hours.

Asked on July 9, 2017 under Malpractice Law, Florida

Answers:

SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney

Answered 6 years ago | Contributor

You can file a complaint with the state's medical licensing board, but there is no other effective recourse. The problem you face is that medical malpractice suits are very expensive--even if you were to be your own attorney (whcih is *not* recommended), you MUST hire a medical expert in an appropriate discipline (such as a pain management doctor) to render an opinion, write a report, and if necessary testify in court: only a medical expert's testimony is considered about whether this was malpractice and the consequences thereof. But if your daughter, as we hope, did not suffer provalel lasting harm from this, then the amount of compensation she might get for 16 hours of post operative pain is likely less thant the many hundren or several thousand dollar cost of hiring the medical expert.


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