Medical Malpractice Terms and Definitions

Informed Consent Is the process by which fully informed patients can participate in choices about Their healthcare. It originates from the legal and ethical right the patient has to direct what happens to her body and from the ethical duty of the physician to involve the patient in her health care. Terminal sedation Terminal sedation is the use of high doses of sedatives to relieve extremes of physical distress. Its purpose is to render the patient unconscious to relieve suffering until the patient dies from his or her disease processes and their complications. Assumption of risk In the law of negligence, as a defense, a defendant's allegation that the injured plaintiff recognized the danger of the plaintiff's course of action but, nonetheless, willingly chose to risk such danger. Discovery The pre-trial process, such as a deposition, by which one party discovers the evidence that will be relied upon at trial by the opposing party. Punitive damages Damages awarded in addition to compensatory (economic and noneconomic) damages to punish a defendant for willful and wanton conduct. Res ipsa loquitur The use of res ipsa loquitur should be prohibited in medical malpractice cases because under this doctrine the mere fact that the injury occurs means that the defendant was negligent, although it is not all the time. Causalgia Pain, usually burning, that is associated with autonomic changes -- change in color of the skin, change in temperature, change in sweating, swelling. Causalgia occurs after a nerve injury. Elder Abuse Is any "physical abuse, neglect, financial abuse, abandonment, isolation, abduction or other treatment with resulting in physical harm or pain or mental suffering, or the deprivation by a care custodian of goods or services that are necessary to avoid physical harm or mental suffering Proximate Cause Proximate cause is defined legally as a cause which, in a natural and continuous sequence, unbroken by any intervening event, produces injury, and without which, the injury would not have occurred. Affidavit A voluntary statement or declaration of facts that has been written down and confirmed under oath.

Please contact us if anyone you know has suffered from debilitating injuries due to medical malpractice in Birmingham.

	Did You Know?
	Sexual abuse is a form a medical malpractice Sexual abuse of or sexual misconduct with a patient is also a serious issue. Six to ten percent of psychiatrists surveyed confessed to having engaged in sexual contact with a patient and in a longitudinal study.