What to Do If You Suspect Medical Malpractice

If you think something went wrong with your medical care, the most useful things you can do are also the least dramatic. They involve paperwork and a notebook, and they are worth doing before you decide whether you want a lawyer at all.

None of these steps commits you to anything. They preserve your ability to get an answer later, which is easy to lose by waiting. This article is one part of a larger topic; for the full picture, see our guide to medical malpractice in Delaware.

Step 1: Get your medical records

Request a complete copy of your records from every provider involved — the hospital, the physician’s office, imaging, labs, and pharmacy. Ask in writing, ask for everything rather than a summary, and keep a copy of the request. Records are the evidence in a malpractice case; nothing meaningful can be assessed without them.

A few practical notes. Providers are permitted to charge a reasonable fee for copying, and they have a defined period to respond, so start early rather than assuming it will be quick. Ask specifically for the complete chart, not a discharge summary — nursing notes, medication administration records, monitoring strips, and imaging are frequently where the answer sits, and none of those appear in a summary.

If you were treated at more than one facility, request from each separately. Records do not follow a patient automatically, and the gaps between providers are often exactly what a case turns on.

You do not need a lawyer to make this request. Your records belong to you.

Step 2: Write down what happened while it’s fresh

Memory degrades faster than people expect, and malpractice cases move slowly. Write down what you remember now, in whatever form is easiest, and date it.

Useful things to capture:

• The timeline. When symptoms started, when you sought care, when you were seen, what you were told, when things changed.
• Who said what. Names where you have them, roles where you do not — “the night nurse,” “the surgeon who came in afterwards.”
• What you reported and how it was received. Particularly if you raised a concern more than once.
• What you were told to expect, and how that compares to what happened.
• The practical effects. Days of work missed, help you needed at home, treatment you have had since.

Keep it factual rather than argumentative. The value of this document is that it is contemporaneous, and its usefulness depends on it reading as a record rather than a case.

Step 3: Consider (but don’t rely solely on) a second medical opinion

A second opinion from another physician can be genuinely clarifying, especially when you are still receiving treatment and need to know what your options are now.

Be aware of its limits, though. A treating physician asked informally whether a colleague made an error is in an awkward position and may not answer squarely. More importantly, a second opinion is a clinical judgment, not a legal one — it addresses what should happen next, not whether the earlier care fell below the standard.

A malpractice claim in Delaware requires review by a qualified medical expert who has examined the records specifically for that question. That is a different exercise from a second opinion, and it is arranged as part of a case rather than something you need to organize yourself.

Step 4: Don’t wait — Delaware’s filing deadlines are real

This is the step people get wrong, and it is the one that cannot be repaired afterwards.

Delaware sets a limitations period for medical negligence claims, with a narrow allowance where an injury could not reasonably have been discovered within it, and a different rule for children injured before the age of six. The deadline runs from the date of the injury rather than the date you realised something was wrong, which catches people out — by the time a problem becomes obvious, months of the period may already have passed.

Missing it ends a claim regardless of how strong it otherwise was. Delaware also requires an affidavit of merit from a qualified medical expert to be filed with the complaint, which takes time to obtain, so the practical deadline for getting advice is earlier than the statutory one. Our guide to Delaware’s statute of limitations and the affidavit of merit sets out how both work and where the exceptions apply.

Step 5: Talk to a medical malpractice attorney

A consultation is free and carries no obligation. What it gets you is a straight assessment of whether the records show a departure from the standard of care that caused the harm — or whether what happened, however difficult, was a known risk of treatment competently delivered.

Both answers are worth having. If you are still weighing whether your situation is a claim at all, our comparison of malpractice and a bad medical outcome works through the three questions that separate them. If you have decided to speak to someone and want to know what to look for, see how to choose a medical malpractice attorney in Delaware.

For the full picture of how these claims work in Delaware, start with our guide to medical malpractice in Delaware.