Medical malpractice cases usually involve complex legal terminology. To navigate the deep waters of medical malpractice claims, it’s important for a medical negligence victim to understand the legal terms and how they may apply to his or her case.

Common Medical Malpractice Terms to Know

Below are some common terms in medical malpractice cases.

Affidavit: A sworn statement that assures the merit of facts written down and confirmed by oath.

Forward-Collision Warning, Blind-Spot Monitoring, Automatic Emergency Braking, and other advanced safety systems are keeping drivers safe. These systems use radar, cameras, and other sensors to keep an eye on what’s happening on the roads around them. Using onboard computers, they process the collected information and respond when a crash appears imminent.

Forward-Collision Warning (FCW)

This safety feature uses cameras, radar, or lasers to watch the road ahead and monitor relative speed and distances between vehicles. It provides a visual, audible, and/or tactile warning of an impending collision with a pedestrian, car, or another object. These systems are sometimes accompanied by auto-braking features that will automatically hit the brakes if the driver fails to heed the warning.

Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB)

Using radar and forward-facing cameras, the AEB system detects potential collisions and warns the driver of an impending forward crash with another car, object, or pedestrian. If the driver fails to react in time, the system automatically applies the brakes to prevent or reduce the severity of a crash.

Concrete workers face a variety of hazards that can cause serious injuries, disabilities, or death. As a result, OSHA mandated a number of safety standards geared towards keeping workers safe. Despite these standards, however, employers often fail to take precautionary measures to protect their workers. Unsafe conditions in the concrete industry continue to cause approximately 28,000 serious injuries and illnesses and about 40 deaths each year. By recognizing workplace hazards and following a few safety tips, concrete workers can reduce their risk of getting seriously injured, becoming permanently disabled, or dying. 

Hazards Concrete Workers Face

Some of the most common hazards that cause serious injuries or death to concrete workers include:

• Falls from cranes or other elevated workspaces
• Getting crushed or pinned by heavy slabs of concrete when partially constructed foundations collapse
• Exposure to concrete dust that contains components like Silica that can cause permanent lung damage including silicosis and lung cancer
• Overexertion and heatstroke from working in extreme weather conditions
• Getting impaled by rebar that is sticking out of concrete slabs
• Back, neck, and shoulder injuries caused by improper lifting or repetitively lifting heavy equipment

OSHA Safety Standards for Concrete Workers

Safety standards mandated by OSHA are designed to help prevent worksite accidents that cause concrete worker injuries and fatalities. Some of OSHA’s safety standards address the following.

“We are seeing an increased amount of traumatic brain injuries in our cases. The popular press is discussing this more and more in relation to professional football. We asked our research clerk, Hannah Grace, to firm up our research in this area and the following is an article by Hannah summarizing her findings. As a caution to the public nothing herein is intended as medical advice and anything anyone can rely upon medically. Consult your physician.” — Charles E. Adler

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is defined as a severe, violent strike to the head that causes the brain to bump against the inside of the skull.  The injury can range from mild to severe. The degree of trauma depends on different factors including the force of impact and nature of the accident. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the leading causes of TBIs are falls, blunt trauma, and motor vehicle accidents. Violence, sports injuries, and explosive blasts are also common in causing TBIs. Symptoms for both mild and severe TBI can include some of the same symptoms. Intellectual and communication problems are also known to develop after a TBI. In 2014 an average of 155 people died each day from injuries that included a TBI. Deaths that were related to TBI were the highest among people 75 and older.  Emergency department visits, hospitalizations, and deaths relating to TBI’s increased 53% from 2006 to 2014. Different tests are used to diagnose a TBI.

The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is a commonly used test. The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) measures a person’s ability to speak, open their eyes, and move. A score of 13 or higher represents a mild TBI, 9-12 indicates a moderate TBI, and 8 or below indicates a severe TBI. Different imaging tests are used to take photos of person’s brain. A computerized tomography (CT) scan can take x-rays to show bleeding in the brain. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) uses magnets to produce more detailed images than a CT. There are both long term and immediate problems surrounding a TBI. Longer-term effects of TBI can cause problems with brain functions including issues with cognition, senses, communication, behavior, and emotions.

Corrupt nursing homes are prone to incidents of neglect and abuse. Improper supervision of nursing home staff, understaffing, negligent care, and irresponsible or even abusive actions of caregivers in these facilities can put elderly residents in danger.

Concealing Neglect and Abuse in Nursing Homes

The horror stories in the news regarding nursing home abuse and neglect are astounding. In October of 2019, 3 nursing home facility workers in North Carolina were charged with forcing residents to participate in a fighting ring with other residents. In some instances, staff members were recording the fights and encouraging nursing home residents, many of which had Alzheimer’s and dementia, to abuse one another.

The month prior to the North Carolina case, Philip Esformes, CEO of a chain of nursing home and assisted living facilities, was convicted of numerous schemes that involved bribing doctors to refer patients to Esformes’s facilities, inappropriately moving residents between facilities to keep ratios stable, and even bribing government officials to give facilities notice when a surprise inspection was about to take place. As a result, many residents received inadequate medical care, lived in poor or unsafe conditions, were charged for unnecessary services, or denied any services whatsoever. After years of investigations that began in 2016, multiple charges were admitted to, and a 20-year sentence along with a $44 million penalty was received. In addition to criminal charges, Esformes may face civil lawsuits from the victims’ families.