Negligence A) Elements of Negligence Your Son

Negligence

a) Elements of Negligence

Your son sustains a deep laceration on the leg, and you decide to bring him to the hospital for the doctor to perform the routine check-up and at the same time dress the wound. You stop the bleeding, disinfect, and gauze the wound before leaving the house. At the hospital, the doctor, in a rush, performs the regular check-up, and then embarks on addressing the wound. He does appear fazed and hastily makes an assumption that it would require no more than a few stitches. He takes tools from the top of the examination table, and uses them on your son's one-hour-old wound; not knowing that they had been used to treat a child with an infection. The hospital policy requires doctors to only use sterilized tools from designated drawers. A week later, your son's wound becomes discolored, and he gets increasingly unwell. You return to the doctor but he feigns ignorance and instead refers you to another specialist.

Duty: by signing in at the doctor's desk and undergoing examination, the patient established a relationship with the physician, who then owed him the duty of care (Bal, 2009). The doctor was then supposed to act in line with the regulations governing the medical community, and as other physicians in a similar situation would have acted.

Breach: once the duty of care has been established, the doctor is supposed to treat the patient with reasonable care, and in line with the actions and procedures governing the practice (Bal, 2009). By using tools from the top of the table, other than sterilized ones from inside the drawers, the doctor breached office protocol, and put your son's life in danger.

Injury: your son contracted an infection as a direct result of the doctor's action. For the suit to be successful, you need to prove that the infection resulted directly from the use of un-sanitized tools (Bal, 2009).

Damages: economic or non-economic damages should be suffered (Bal, 2009). You incurred substantive medical bills, and had to take time from work to attend to your ailing son.

b) Closing Medical Staff to New Physicians

c) Hospital Liability