Toms River, New Jersey, Personal Injury Blog

Medical malpractice encompasses a host of situations. One of these is birth injuries. Women who go into the hospital or a birth center expect to deliver healthy babies without having any issues. Unfortunately, there are times when things go wrong. These can put a mother and her baby in danger.

It's estimated that five out of every 1,000 babies will have a birth injury. These are the result of a medical professional who doesn't handle something during the birth properly. While you may automatically think first of your doctor's liability, the real fault could lie with any member of your labor and delivery team.

Medical diagnosis errors are alarmingly common in New Jersey and across the United States, according to multiple studies. However, experts say there are several measures health professionals can take to help reduce the risk of misdiagnosis for patients.

Each year, approximately 12 million Americans are affected by misdiagnosis issues nationwide, according to a 2014 report published in the journal BMJ Quality & Safety. Of those, around half are estimated to be "potentially harmful." In addition, a report by the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine estimated that between 40,000 and 80,000 U.S. patients die from misdiagnosis complications every year.

Those who take multiple medications are at an increased risk of being the victim of an adverse drug event. Therefore, it is important that those who are taking any type of medication know how to use it properly. For instance, it is not a good idea to chew a pill that is not supposed to be chewed or to cut a pill in half unless a doctor says it's acceptable to do so.

It is also important to use the right type of spoon or syringe when taking a medication. Patients are encouraged to know their dose as taking too much of a liquid or too many pills can cause significant side effects. In many cases, dosage requirements for children are different than those for adults. Dosage requirements may also vary based on a person's height and weight. Therefore, it is important that individuals are honest with their doctors when disclosing that information.

Anyone who works in the medical field in New Jersey knows how important it is to stay focused on the job. A report published in JAMA Pediatrics shows that errors can become more frequent among nurses who are distracted by their phones. For their study, researchers analyzed the behavior of 257 nurses in pediatric intensive care units and how this affected 3,308 patients.

Around half of these nurses received a call on their phones 10 minutes before administering medication to a patient. The rate of medication errors was 3.7% for these nurses whereas those who did not receive a call had an error rate of 3.1%. The error rate did not change when nurses received a text message, though previous research has shown that notifications from social media do change it.