Does Medical Malpractice Apply To Plastic Surgeons?
Medical malpractice typically refers to any doctor or licensed/registered nurse who does harm or neglect to a patient either intentionally or accidentally through a lack of proper medical practices and procedures. So it begs the question "Does medical malpractice apply to plastic surgeons?" The short answer is "yes." The long answer is as follows.
It Depends
You are having an elective surgery to change something about yourself. The doctors that specialize in cosmetic surgery are still doctors and therefore are held to the same standards of care as any other doctor. However, the circumstances may be very different. Therefore, it depends on what the circumstance is in your case that you think it warrants visits with medical malpractice attorneys to see what can be done.
Unwanted Procedures
Many surgeons have you sign a consent form to "do whatever the surgeon deems necessary to produce the desired results and keep the patient alive and well." However, these consent forms can also be a go-ahead ticket for doctors to do as they please. For example, if you go into surgery expecting a bowel resection and your doctor removes the twisted piece of bowel and your appendix, you can argue that he/she did not have permission. That can be grounds for medical malpractice, but since doctors remove appendices all the time, it may be difficult to argue. Yet this example reveals an important fact; doctors can, and often do, complete procedures that are neither required nor requested.
Likewise, a plastic surgeon may also do this. If you ask for a breast lift without implants, and you wake up with implants anyway, your surgeon did something he/she should not have done because you did not want it nor did you ask for it. Now if you have to have additional surgery to remove the implants, you have a lot more pain and suffering, an unnecessary procedure to fix the previous surgeon's error, and extra expenses you did not account for. You can hire a sue the first surgeon for all of the above.
Neglect
As for neglect, it is absolutely possible to be a victim of neglect where a cosmetic surgeon is concerned. This happens when a surgeon creates surgical mishaps with closing incisions, failing to provide two days' worth of post-operative care and follow-up care, and/or sending you home immediately after surgery with not even so much as a couple of pain pills. When you try to contact the doctor in regards to a problem with your procedure, he/she is unreachable. This is considered neglect, and yes, you can sue.