Your doctor screwed up and now you are really, really ill. You haven’t been able to work and the bills are stacking up. You may not be physically able to do your job anymore. You are getting worn out trying to get your doctor to make things right and don’t know how much longer you can keep it up. You need to turn your energy toward finding an experienced medical malpractice lawyer. She will negotiate on your behalf and track down all the moving parts of your case and make the other side pay for what happened.

Unfortunately, doctors are human and make mistakes. A report from the federal government in 1999 estimated that between 44,000 and 98,000 people die in hospitals alone every year as a result of medical negligence. That’s not counting the other types of medical offices and doesn’t include people who didn’t die but were injured. That’s a whole lot of people and you are one of them. A medical malpractice case is a lawsuit against doctors and other medical workers who make such errors.

Did your doctor commit malpractice against you? If he did something really obvious like perform the wrong operation, then absolutely. But it may be hard to tell what went wrong in your case. An experienced attorney can find out by looking through all the evidence. You’ll most likely need to sue everyone that participated in your care, including the hospital in order to get to the bottom of it. That consent form you signed shouldn’t keep you from asserting your rights. But it might require that you deal with problems out of court through arbitration. An experienced lawyer will know exactly how to handle such a situation.

You might feel like you are swimming against the tide trying to juggle all the doctors, the hospital, insurance companies and lawyers for the other side. Your attorney can take this off your plate so you can focus on getting better and putting your life back together. Since she knows what she’s doing, she won’t be intimidated. Make sure you act before any time limits for filing suit expire. Your medical malpractice attorney should have lots of experience with similar cases. Since every case is different, don’t ask what her average award is, instead find out what percent go to trial and how many are settled. She should pay close attention when you speak and ask probing questions to get to the heart of the matter. She’ll very carefully explain what happens in a lawsuit like this and how she expects to be paid. An attorney that spends a lot of time bragging about a big payday without hearing the particulars of your case is probably not going to do a good job for you.

Once you decide to go ahead with the suit it is time to start assembling a list of witnesses and evidence. This is called discovery and it allows attorneys for both sides to assess the case and identify any possible damages. Since the case involves your medical history, your medical records will become evidence and both sides will have access to them. You might need to see additional experts to assess your condition. This stage of the game also includes a deposition, meaning that you will be interviewed under oath. This is not a fast process. Even if the case settles, you need to be prepared for it to take a while.

You had faith in your doctor that he wouldn’t hurt you. Instead he made your medical situation worse and you need him to pay for your damages. Your best bet at getting fully compensated is to hire an experienced medical malpractice attorney. It would be nice if you were able to get a big sack of money right away, but the process takes time. This is especially true if there are a lot of different people involved in a complex situation. While you focus on recovering from your injuries, your attorney will focus on making sure you get the compensation you deserve.