Negligence And Malpractice

Understanding Dental Negligence

When most people think of medical negligence and malpractice, they think of healthcare professionals such as doctors but in truth, this type of wrongdoing could be at the hands of a therapist, nurse, and even dentist.  Therefore, we wanted to address the issue of dental negligence so you as a consumer would know how to protect yourself from serious harm and sadly, even death.

If you are like most people, the thought of going to the dentist is tough enough but then when you consider risks of dentist malpractice, you probably feel even more nervous.  The truth is that you do not need to fear seeing the dentist just become aware of potential problems.  That way, you can start by choosing a highly qualified professional, one with years of experience and all the right training and licensing.  This alone would greatly reduce issues of medical negligence and malpractice.

One of the challenges of dentist negligence is that being the patient, not only would it be difficult to see mistakes on the inside of your own mouth but also, you would not possess the knowledge to distinguish quality care from poor or reckless care.  Because of this, most people that end up with damage only find out after experiencing a raging infection or permanent and significant tooth and gum damage.

Just like doctors, dentists are required to maintain dentist malpractice insurance so if something were to go wrong, they have protection.  However as a patient any recourse for substandard care leading to serious damage or death would have to play out in a court of law.  Again, the best protection you have is knowledge, which means choosing the right dentist, as well as understanding the different ways in which dentist negligence is categorized.

•    Misdiagnosis – Of all medical negligence and malpractice cases for the dental industry, the majority are related to misdiagnosis.  In this case, if the dentist overlooked a serious health risk and as a result, you were to receive inadequate or improper treatment, surgery, and/or medication causing pain and damage, you would have a legitimate case.
 
•    Carelessness – Another common area for dental malpractice has to do with irresponsibility or carelessness.  For this, if the dentist were to provide poor care, not meeting current medical professional standards and knowingly or purposely failed to provide the level and type of care needed, again this would be medical negligence and malpractice.

•    Inadequate Care – Next, a qualified and licensed dentist is required to provide all patients with proper and adequate care.  Now, dentists are humans too and an occasional error is to be expected but when looking at long-term care if treatment were inadequate for the problem this would be deemed negligence.

•    Medication – Dentists prescribe medication for a variety of reasons.  This might be in the form of an antibiotic for an oral infection, pain medication after a difficult procedure or surgery, and even drugs to relax a person or put them completely out for certain surgical procedures.  However, if the wrong type or wrong dosage of medication was administered or prescribed and the result was serious injury or death, a medical negligence and malpractice lawsuit should follow.