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Medical Issues

Pain Management Medicine - Podiatry

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Pain Management Medicine

This specialist has developed rapidly in the past ten years. Many of these specialists are physicians who specialize in anesthesia (anesthesiologists). The patient comes to these specialists with a myriad of complaints. The spectrum of his or her pain complaints shadow the galaxies of the universe. The patients are referred by physicians of every specialty after their pain management has failed. The actionable medical malpractice for these specialists is as diverse as are the patients' complaints. Initially, this specialist must make a differential diagnosis that the referring physician may not have made. This is, does the patient have a physiological reason for his or her pain or is there psychological basis for the pain? There may be a psychological component overlaid on a physiological basis. The pain management specialist must avoid over medicating the patient, getting the patient addicted to pain relieving drugs or creating drug-seeking patients.

Pathology

This field of medicine is evaluation and diagnosis of disease processes by a microscopic and chemical examination of tissue and fluids removed from the body. The negligence found in this specialty extends from misreading pap smears or breast tissue, to the more complicated detection of disease in blood sampling.

Pediatrics

This area of medicine that has been defined as treating children from newborns to adulthood. The pediatrician is charged with diagnosing conditions that appear early in life. Frequently the event of medical malpractice occurs shortly after birth and can lead to tragic deaths of newborns. For instance, a baby born to a mother who suffered from diabetes (gestational or otherwise) must be monitored extremely close following birth for a precipitous fall in the baby's blood sugar that can lead to irreversible brain damage. Making differential diagnoses in small children can be very critical in separating the routine conditions from the critical ones.

The standard of care requires the detection of correctable heart defects in the newborn which are reversible if diagnosed in early years before the child develops pulmonary hypertension and its sequelae.

Psychiatry

Substandard practice in this area of medicine involving mental illness can result in culpable patient injuries and death. The subject matter of the cases form a wide spectrum of responsibility from failure to detect suicidal ideation to failure to diagnose medical conditions such as brain tumors. Negligence can also occur in failing to differentiate neurological disease from a mental illness.

Podiatry

These health care professionals are not medical doctors but have degrees in podiatric medicine. Their field of expertise is limited to the foot and ankle, but they do have surgical privileges. The quality of care of podiatrists is frequently questioned in the areas of bunionectomies and heel spur surgery.

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