How to Preserve Evidence of Medical Malpractice
If you suspect medical malpractice while you or a loved one is still receiving treatment, documenting what happens can be extremely important. In this video, we explain why relying on memory alone may not be enough and how creating a contemporaneous record can help preserve important details. We also discuss a simple way to document events that includes a date and time stamp, which may be valuable later if questions arise about what occurred. Watch the video below to learn more.
Video Transcription
A question that I'm asked sometimes is, "How should I document a potential medical malpractice case?"
It's not unusual for us to get a call, for example, from somebody who's in the hospital and they say to us, "I think that there was some malpractice that occurred here. What should I do? I'm still in the hospital with my loved one."
What I tell people in that type of a situation is that the doctors and the nurses have a way to document what happened there, and you need to make sure that you document as well.
They document through the medical records.
But a jury is not going to just believe you if you just took some notes and you tell them that those are contemporaneous notes of what happened.
What you should do instead is document what happened by sending emails or text messages to family or friends so that you have not only a record of what happened, but you also have a date-stamped and time-stamped copy of when it happened.
So that when they put their medical records up there and they say, "Well, this is how it happened," you have similar records to say to the contrary.
It's not unusual for us to get a call, for example, from somebody who's in the hospital and they say to us, "I think that there was some malpractice that occurred here. What should I do? I'm still in the hospital with my loved one."
What I tell people in that type of a situation is that the doctors and the nurses have a way to document what happened there, and you need to make sure that you document as well.
They document through the medical records.
But a jury is not going to just believe you if you just took some notes and you tell them that those are contemporaneous notes of what happened.
What you should do instead is document what happened by sending emails or text messages to family or friends so that you have not only a record of what happened, but you also have a date-stamped and time-stamped copy of when it happened.
So that when they put their medical records up there and they say, "Well, this is how it happened," you have similar records to say to the contrary.