There are many areas of life in which women are treated unfairly. From being paid a fraction of what men are paid for the same job to being more likely to be victims of sexual harassment and domestic violence, women often find themselves struggling to be treated the same as men. This holds true when it comes to health care, as women often feel misunderstood, dismissed, and ignored by medical professionals. When it comes to women’s health care, medical negligence is a significant problem. Expert reports show that women, particularly minority women, are 20-30% more likely to experience a misdiagnosis than White men. If you have experienced an injury or other harm because a medical professional made a mistake in diagnosing or treating your condition, an experienced New Mexico medical negligence attorney may be able to assist you. Call Erin Marshall Law at (505) 218-9949 to schedule a consultation and review your case.
What Is Medical Negligence?
Medical negligence is a legal theory in which a doctor’s actions or the omission of actions fall below the standard of care. The medical professional fails to treat the patient in line with the currently accepted medical standard of care. The term is often used interchangeably with medical malpractice, though the two are slightly different.
Examples of this negligence include prescribing or administering the wrong medication or the wrong dosage of the right medication, surgical errors, childbirth injuries, anesthesia errors, or delayed diagnoses. To rise to the level of medical negligence, an individual must prove that the medical professional deviated from the standard of care and caused harm. For example, operating on the wrong body part may be negligence. Prescribing a medication for a condition that any other doctor would prescribe may not be negligence just because the patient experiences significant side effects.
What Is Women’s Health Care?
Broadly speaking, women’s health care could be any health care that a woman receives. Specifically, it relates to health issues that are unique to women. These may be issues such as female cancers, menstruation, pregnancy, prenatal care, fertility conditions, postpartum care, and reproductive health.
Additionally, women’s health may also refer to conditions that affect both men and women but may affect women differently. Examples of this might be heart disease, heart attacks, or diabetes. Drugs and devices that are designed for women, or designed for men and women but only tested on men, may also fall under this category.
What Are Some Key Aspects of Medical Negligence in Women’s Health Care?
While it may seem as though medical negligence is a clearly defined circumstance that is the same for both men and women, it is not. Some key aspects are unique to women’s health care, and these aspects can also make it much more difficult for a woman to prove negligence. If you believe that you or a woman you love has been harmed or injured by a doctor’s negligence, Erin Marshall Law may be able to assist you in filing a claim.
Communication Barriers
One of the biggest problems women face in health care that leads to negligence is communication barriers. Women often find themselves being interrupted or talked over when they try to explain their symptoms or concerns. This stops them from fully expressing their concerns, which leads to medical professionals making diagnoses and prescribing treatments with limited information. If the limited information does not include vital details, the diagnosis and treatments may not be accurate or may not fully resolve the issue.
This can also lead women to avoid seeking help when they need it. When they have been dismissed or ignored enough times, they may eventually feel it is not worth it to attempt to get a diagnosis or treatment. This causes them to suffer more severe symptoms and perhaps allow an injury or illness to advance to a more severe degree before they seek help. A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that women were less likely to be readmitted to the hospital or to die after being treated by a female physician. This may be because female physicians understand what women face, because they are better at communicating and listening, or because they spend more time with their patients. There may also be other reasons that contribute to this difference.
Pain Disparities
Harvard Health reported that 70% of chronic pain conditions affect women, yet 80% of studies done are done on men or male mice. Additionally, in the rare studies done on women’s pain, it was determined that women feel pain more of the time and more intensely than men. Yet, women are made to wait for an average of an hour or more to receive pain medicine for acute abdominal pain while men receive it in an average of 49 minutes. Women are also more likely to be given sedatives instead of painkillers, and women receive pain medication after a coronary bypass roughly half as often as men do.
Other issues regarding pain relate to the fact that men and women do not always present the same symptoms for the same condition. For example, the most typical symptom for a heart attack in men is chest pain, while women typically do not have chest pain. This leads to women being seven times as likely to be misdiagnosed and be sent home from the hospital in the middle of having a heart attack than men.
Surgical Procedures
Women are frequently the victims of unnecessary or improper surgical procedures. One example of this is the hysterectomy rate in the United States. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project reported more than 265,000 hysterectomies per year. The problem with this number is that not all of these hysterectomies are necessary, and in many cases, the informed consent the women are giving is not truly informed, according to 360info.org. They also point out that men’s testicular and prostrate cancers are more common than women’s uterine and ovarian cancers, yet women routinely undergo hysterectomies for those cancers while men’s reproductive organs are much less frequently removed for their cancers. Additionally, the National Library of Medicine found that Black women undergo more frequent hysterectomies than White women.
Another instance of improper surgical procedures is the use of power morcellators when women undergo laparoscopic fibroid tumor surgery. When it was discovered that the power morcellators spread undetected cancers throughout the women’s bodies, often causing their cancer to go from a Stage 1 cancer to a Stage 4, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did not demand the medical community stop using the morcellators. Instead, the FDA simply “discouraged” the use of them and only did that after a woman who had undergone the procedure launched a public campaign to get it banned, according to Fred Hutch Cancer Center. While changes have been made to make their use safer under 2023 FDA Guidance, power morcellators are still in use today.
Gynecological Negligence
Gynecological negligence is an area of women’s health care where medical negligence is often seen. So much is misunderstood or not researched at all when it comes to the female reproductive system. An incomplete list of the negligence that can take place in this area of women’s health includes:
- Mistakes during a procedure or failure to diagnose and treat a medical condition causing a miscarriage, premature birth, incontinence, or sterility
- Failure to manage a high-risk pregnancy properly
- Misinterpretation of tests and scans
- Inadequate monitoring of the mother and/or the fetus or baby during pregnancy, labor, or post-delivery
- Inappropriate delivery methods
- Failure to identify an ectopic pregnancy
- Negligent episiotomies
The National Library of Medicine has noted that in the past, gynecology and obstetrics have been a male-dominated field but that this has shifted, with more women entering the field. They also found that when they surveyed study participants, while most women believed that men and women could both be equally competent as gynecologists, they also believed that women were better at building rapport and that they would be more comfortable with a female gynecologist to discuss their issues. The male domination of the field combined with women preferring a female gynecologist may be contributing factors to the negligence that has taken place in this area of women’s health.
Female-Specific Health Products
Birth control, tampons, menstrual cups, medication specifically for menstrual symptoms, breast implants, and more are all female-specific health products. While these provide options for women, these products are also often rushed to the market with little consideration for their effectiveness or safety. Even after these products have been found to be unsafe or outright dangerous, they often are not removed from the market. Additionally, there have been downright dangerous recommendations about product use given to women in the past, such as when women were once told to use Lysol to douche as a form of birth control, according to Case Western Reserve University’s Dittrick Medical History Center.
Additionally, even when drugs or devices are meant to be used by both men and women, they are often only tested on or for men. Men’s and women’s bodies are quite different, including their hormones, weights, metabolisms, bone structures, blood pressures, heart rates, and more. These differences mean that drugs and devices that are safe for men may not be safe for women, or may only be safe for women at certain dosages or under specific circumstances. Because there is often not enough testing done, women frequently report more severe side effects and other struggles with these drugs and devices.
Legal Damage Limits
Another key aspect of women’s health care and medical negligence is the damage limits set by New Mexico law. While the law applies to both men and women, it tends to have a more significant impact on women than on men.
How Do New Mexico’s Laws Unfairly Impact Women When Filing Medical Negligence Lawsuits?
When a woman has experienced medical negligence and wishes to file a lawsuit, New Mexico laws tend to unfairly impact her. There are two main ways in which these laws unfairly impact women: limits on non-economic damages and the New Mexico Medical Review Commission (MNMRC) case analysis.
Non-Economic Damage Limits
New Mexico’s Medical Malpractice Act, now known as the New Mexico Medical Malpractice Act, limits non-economic damages in these types of cases to $750,000. Economic damages are things such as lost income, medical expenses, and other tangible, provable damages. Non-economic damages are things such as pain and suffering, loss of consortium, and emotional distress.
While one might argue that capping these non-economic damages is appropriate, it is unfair to women as women often see much lower economic damages. While their medical expenses and other damages may be similar to men’s, their income is often lower. This means they receive a lower settlement or judgment based on this lower income. This can be particularly unfair to new moms or stay-at-home moms who do not have an income, as their unpaid contributions to the home may not be fairly compensated in these cases.
How a New Mexico Medical Negligence Attorney Can Assist You
Unfortunately, gender bias in the medical profession exists throughout all parts. From clinical trials to treatment in a primary care office to surgical procedures, women’s health care is frequently susceptible to medical negligence. If you or a woman you love has suffered harm or injury as a result of a doctor’s negligence, you may be able to file a claim. An experienced New Mexico medical malpractice attorney may be able to assist you with gathering evidence, understanding your rights, and preparing your case for litigation. Call Erin Marshall Law at (505) 218-9949 to review your case and discuss your legal options during a consultation.
