Roanoke Personal Injury Law Blog

Like most residents of the Roanoke area, you have a high level of respect for health care professionals. When you feel ill, you trust doctors and nurses to provide exemplary care. As you know, however, mistakes often happen. When medical malpractice leads to significant injuries, you must act quickly to assert your legal right to seek compensation. 

In a recent case, Cranwell & Moore negotiated an $800,000 settlement for a medical malpractice case. As with all matters attorneys at the firm handle, the specific details are confidential. Nonetheless, if you think you may have sustained an injury due to medical malpractice, you should understand how this recent case unfolded. 

No doubt you have been in a vehicle on the highways of Virginia when debris appears, seemingly from nowhere, and strikes the windshield. Sometimes, this startles everyone in the car, but in other cases, cargo flying or falling from a commercial truck can have devastating effects on the vehicles in its path. Regardless of the level of damage the cargo causes, the Code of Virginia has something to say about who is responsible.

According to Article 20, Loads and Cargoes, companies must use certain methods to secure the loads that are on or in their vehicles. For example, a truck hauling cargo that may roll or shift during transport must use one of the following: 

• Log chains
• Nylon webbing
• Metal cables
• Steel straps
• Another adequate and appropriate restraining device

It may surprise you to know how many of those that we here at Cranwell & Moore P.L.C., Attorneys at Law see after having seen loved ones suffer brain injuries who assume that the only outcome of such an accident is life in a vegetative state. It's perfectly normal to immediately assume the worst after hearing that a family member or friend has suffered such an injury. In reality, however, there is a scale of brain injury severity, and depending on where your loved one falls on that scale, a complete recovery may be entirely possible. 

As is the case with any major injury, clear and transparent communication between you and your family member or friend's health care providers is important to understanding their long-term prognosis. One important question that you will want to ask is what was their Glasgow Coma Scale sore. This score indicated the severity of injury they suffered. It is determined by how well your loved one responds to stimuli, how active their eye movement is, and how well they are able to communicate. Point values are assigned for each of the three categories, and then summed to provide an overall score. 

If you have to go in for a surgical procedure in Virginia, you should not have to worry about what things can go wrong. Unfortunately, however, surgical mistakes do occur and some of them lead to medical malpractice claims.

According to the Patient Safety Network, there are three types of serious errors that occur. These include surgeries to the wrong place, those to the wrong person and incorrect procedures. Out of these errors, the most common one is performing a procedure on the wrong side of the patient. While these mistakes are rare, they are ones that should never happen. Because of the seriousness of these errors, prevention protocols are continually updated. Some of the focuses of prevention include:

• Site marking
• Surgical timeout to improve communication
• Individual vigilance
• Focus on safety culture
• Strong teamwork