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  • An Emergency Room Headache – Strokes

An Emergency Room Headache – Strokes

This morning, you awoke with a severe headache. You decide to take ibuprofen, and sleep another hour. You then awake with a worse headache, in which even the slightest movement causes severe discomfort.

After learning your primary care physician is booked until later in the week, you decide to travel to a local Washington D.C. emergency room (ER) for care. You describe your symptoms to the triage nurse, who queried as to whether you are staying hydrated or have a history of migraines. After answering that you always drink eight glasses of water a day and have no history of migraines, the nurse leaves the room. The ER physician enters, asks the same questions, provides you with migraine medication, and sends you on your way.

Three hours later, you experience a numb-like sensation, and then an inability to move the left side of your body. You lose consciousness. Awakened 12 hours later, you learn you had a stroke due to high blood pressure. In the weeks following the stroke, you  learn how to walk and talk again while attempting to regain short-term memory skills. Months later, you make the comment that if the ER doctor or nurse had only checked your blood pressure, the stroke may have been prevented.

Proving an ER department’s act of negligence

In accordance with the Restatement (Third) of Torts: Liability for Physical Harm § 3 (P.F.D. No. 1, 2005) to pursue a medical malpractice action against an ER department, a patient is required to establish:

  • A doctor-patient relationship existed
  • Treatment provided comprised negligent acts
  • Patient suffered harm as a result

A patient must prove that the standard of care or degree of competence exercised by an ER doctor in similar circumstances was breached, and, in effect, caused foreseeable harm.

Obtain representation from effective Washington D.C. attorneys

By bringing one’s case to the Jack H. Olender & Associates, PC, your Washington D.C. medical malpractice attorneys, one finds help from assertive attorneys committed to obtaining the maximum recovery for clients who have experienced injuries due to ER malpractice.

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