Norfolk-Portsmouth Personal Injury Lawyer - Head Injury

Workers Suffering From Brain Injuries Deserve Equal Compensation Rights

Jim Lewis — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:36:00 GMT

You’re better off dying than suffering a brain injury in the state of Virginia (VA). This is the opinion shared by State Sen. Richard Stuart and many others, according to The Virginian-Pilot.

A heart-wrenching example is Art Pierce, a truck driver who, in 2006, suffered a traumatic brain injury in Stafford, Virginia (VA). His family, including his wife Claire Pierce, believes he suffered the injury after falling from a dump truck he was trying to fix, but no one saw him fall and Art was unable to testify at a hearing.

He never recovered from the injury and died in 2008.

Workers' compensation claims made on behalf of workers who die of other on-the-job injuries are routinely given the benefit of the doubt in hearings and other proceedings.

This is completely unfair and imbalanced. A traumatic brain injury can leave a person incapacitated for years and/or eventually lead to death, just like what happened to Art Pierce. The families of these individuals deserve equal compensation. Art Pierce’s family deserves compensation. The law needs to change.

Unfortunately, SB821, the bill focused on changing the current law was defeated due to special interests and lobbyists for insurance companies and other business groups.

Our firm has battled with insurance companies and business groups aiming to deny proper compensation for brain injuries and related head trauma. As a personal injury lawyer focused on ensuring brain injury victims receive proper compensation, I recently attended the 2009 Litigation Strategies Seminar put on by the Brain Injury Association of America in Las Vegas, Nevada. Because our firm regularly goes to the best attorney conferences, we are aware of the latest medical science and trial tactics to get maximum compensation for our clients who have suffered a blow to the head or a cracked skull in car and truck accidents.

We’re proud to have a track record of success in cases like these. For example, our firm won the largest personal injury verdict in Virginia (VA) history and the case revolved around an individual who suffered a traumatic brain injury.

If politicians continue to shirk their responsibility to make the laws fair, we’ll remain focused on keeping these companies honest by fighting them in the courtroom and ensuring justice to citizens afflicted with traumatic head injuries.

About the Editors: Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton personal injury law firm is based in Virginia (VA), near the NE North Carolina (NC) border and handles car,truck,railroad, and medical negligence cases and more. Our lawyers proudly edit the Virginia Beach Injuryboard, Norfolk Injuryboard, and Northeast North Carolina Injuryboard as a pro bono public information service. Lawyers licensed in: VA, NC, SC, WV, DC, KY.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jim Lewis

Virginia (VA) Woman Suffers Brain Injury Caused by Teenagers in Automobile Collision

John Cooper — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:34:24 GMT

According to an article in the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, a nurse from Falls Church, Virginia (VA), named Molly Raymond, suffered mild brain injury after being hit by two cars, both driven by teenagers. Because of the brain injury, she has no longer been able to work or continue her regular activities.

The lawsuit from this accident was pending in the Fairfax, Virginia (VA) Circuit Court. The insurance company lawyers stated that since there was no evidence of brain damage in her scans, she only had a psychological issue. As a Virginia (VA) personal injury attorney for decades, I know that this argument is misleading as scans often don't show damage to the brain, just as a regular x-ray does not show damage to the spinal discs which are soft material. Raymond's doctor testified that she had seen him for a neck injury, involving the accident, and she had no recollection of the meeting. The jury awarded a verdict in the amount of 2 million on May 11, 2007.

For more information on this subject, please refer to our section on Head and Brain Injuries.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

Top 5 Ways Not To Choose Your Personal Injury Lawyer

John Cooper — Fri, 18 May 2007 10:19:31 GMT

I have been practicing law in Virginia Beach and Norfolk, Virginia (VA) for about two decades focusing on accidental injury and wrongful death cases. I have heard amazing stories about how million dollar automobile accident cases have gone to lawyers who really had no business handling such a case for all sorts of strange reasons. The suggestions for a person with an accident case in Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) from me and my law partner, Richard N. Shapiro:

1. Do not pick your personal injury lawyer based on the last attorney you happen to have contact with such as the real estate lawyer who did your closing on your refinance or the lady lawyer you hired to do your traffic case in the Norfolk General District Court. These attorneys may be great at real estate or traffic but in today's era of specialization that may not be the attorney that you want handling a serious injury file.

2. Do not pick your personal injury lawyer based upon that attorney who hangs out in the bar that you sometimes got to after work because he is a great guy. That lawyer in the bar may be everyone's best friend, but your automobile injury case deserves an attorney whose main qualification is not just staying on the bar stool when drunk.

3. Do not pick your personal injury lawyer based on who paid the yellow pages $100,000.00 to be on the back of their book. That lawyer may generate a lot of calls from people in Virginia (VA) who have automobile accidents, but it does not mean that he is a good lawyer who will get the best result and give the best service on your injury case just because he shelled out that money to buy some cases.

4. Do not pick your personal injury lawyer because he happens to have the same last name as you do. Although I am sure you love your name, this is no way to decide who is going to represent your family in a big automobile accident case that may be one of the most important financial transactions of your life.

5. Do not pick your personal injury lawyer because they happen to be a family member even though they have never handled significant personal injury litigation. I am sure that your niece who just graduated from law school in Virginia Beach, Virginia (VA) or your cousin who is an insurance defense lawyer in Norfolk, Virginia (VA) are nice people. However, what you need is someone who regularly handles automobile accident cases with serious injuries from the plaintiff's perspective, meaning that of the injured person. Further, you want someone who has done that for a long time with a proven track record of being good at it. You do not want to have a claim against your family member for messing up your injury case. Go to the right attorney right away.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

All We Do Is Injury Law

John Cooper — Fri, 11 May 2007 12:52:15 GMT

Our firm uses the slogan "All we do is injury law" to summarize what our firm's focus is. However, there are really many types of cases within personal injury law. As a Virginia (VA) personal injury attorney, it always amazes me that clients may not fully understand what areas of law we practice in when we say we do injury law. I have had a client indicate that he didn't contact me about the wrongful death of his son who was hit on a bicycle by a motor vehicle because he didn't think we did wrongful death cases. I have had other clients who while listening to our voice message for clients on hold realize that we handle automobile cases, not just train wreck and railroad injury cases. We hope that our clients realize that we handle cases in all areas of injury law and not just in Virginia (VA), North Carolina (NC) and West Virginia (WV) but throughout the eastern United States.

Some of the other areas which come under the heading "injury law" include auto accidents, collisions involving tractor trailer negligence, motorcycle wrecks and cases where a pedestrian or bicyclist is hit by a car. From the stand point of a Virginia personal injury lawyer, all of these injuries cases involve motor vehicles. From the stand point of getting a fair recovery to compensate a person for injuries suffered by a motor vehicle, these cases all have much in common. It doesn't really matter whether the motor vehicle involved in the accident is a car, a light truck, a big rig, or a golf cart. We are experienced in dealing with all these different combinations and scenarios. Obviously the insurance law applicable and the coverage rules are different in a large interstate truck with a million dollars of coverage compared to a passenger car that may have minimum coverage which in Virginia is $25,000 per person. However, whatever the type of motor vehicle wreck we are experience in handling cases where someone is hurt or killed by the actions of someone else operating such vehicles.

Injuries that we represent people on involve all sorts of different kinds of trauma and medical services. This means that our field of expertise involves all parts of the human body that can be hurt in an accident. These range from death down to strain/sprain injuries to the connective tissue in the back. However, there are certain typical injuries that we have developed experience with over firm's lawyers' decades of practice. For example, traumatic brain injuries are very complex injuries which often occur in accidents. We are also very used to dealing with plastic surgery injuries such as burns and scarring to the skin. Another area that we as personal injury lawyers deal with regularly are broken bones and other injures requiring surgery to the musculoskeletal system, including all the joints like knee injuries, shoulder injuries, elbow injuries and hand injuries. We have many cases that involve spinal injuries like herniations, ruptures or protrusions of the discs separating the bones of the spine. This kind of injury to the spine and to its discs routinely occurs in car wreck and FELA injuries to railroad workers. In the area of FELA injuries caused by railroad companies to their workers, there are certain types of injuries that we see over and over again such as carpal tunnel problems with the wrist and hands requiring surgery, bulging discs in the back, traumatic hearing loss and tinnitus from loud noise in the railroad work environment and, tragically, severed limbs. Often the injuries in railroad related cases are among the most severe because of the huge size and weight of railroad equipment which causes major destruction when it comes in contact with the human body or a vehicle.

Another set of areas of personal injury law that we routinely deal with has to do with who is the actor causing an injury. Injuries that occur as a result of errors by health care providers are common. These cases are often referred to as medical malpractice cases, and can also include nursing home or hospital negligence. A common theme in this kind of injury is that the person responsible is someone in the medical field providing services. Under Virginia law there is a whole special set of statutes or written laws governing what happens when medical mistakes occur and cause injury. These cases typically involve permanent and catastrophic injuries because unless such injuries are involved it's hard to justify taking on the fight against doctors and their powerful insurance companies under the challenging law in Virginia to prove these cases.

Another area of injury law that Hajek, Shapiro, Cooper, Lewis and Appleton regularly practice in is premises liability. There are many terms that you may have heard of to describe premises liability cases. However these injury cases are the ones where you get hurt at a particular place where the owner or occupier of the land or building has done something wrong to cause the injury. Sometimes these cases are referred to as trip and fall injuries cases, slip and fall injury cases or similar language. The common denominator in these injuries and wrongful death cases is that someone having a duty to properly keep their premises safe has failed to do so by leaving a dangerous condition that should have been corrected or warned about. Many times these cases are against businesses like restaurants, stores, or railroad companies who know that people will be on their land and yet fail to take proper safety precautions to prevent injuries. Often these cases involve someone slipping on water that has been left on the floor or tripping because of a hole that has been left unrepaired. However premises liability cases can involve things like falling merchandise that has been stack to high by a warehouse store in such a way that is falls onto customers. In the railroad context it often involves children playing near railroad tracks or other dangerous industrial sites with horrible results.

A further area of injury cases are ones against manufacturers or distributors of products or services which are defective and cause harm to death to an individual. These cases can involve major, expensive and complex products, like airplanes that crash because of some flaw, down to much more simple, everyday household products. Defective products can include a space heater which does not have appropriate safety devices and causes a house fire where a family gets hurt. Often products liability cases arise out of industrial accidents such as a ladder which is improperly made that causes someone to have a severe injury. For more information about these and other types of injury cases, please look at our website under the case results section at www.hsninjurylaw.com. I hope that this summary of what we mean when we say "all we do is injury law" is helpful to you in defining all the different types of cases that we get involved in. Obviously, I hope that neither you nor your loved ones get hurt in any fashion. However, if you are hurt as a result of someone else's wrong doing or think that you may have been, I hope that you will contact us to see if we can help.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

Brain Injury: The Walking Wounded

John Cooper — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:59:00 GMT

A recent medical study of professional football players has showed that brain injury is a more significant problem, than thought. However, brain injury has probably been ignored or down played in the NFL and the medical community for a long time. Because brain injury is not always as obvious as some kind of a broken bone, it is easier to forget about or treat the injury as less than a real problem. This recent study showed that there is a major loss of function that occurs to football players who have repeated concussions over the course of a career. These players are the walking wounded. They walk around and look relatively normal, but their brains have been hurt and it has real effects on their lives.

In the field of personal injury law, we have been paying more attention to brain injuries recently. Other names for this trauma include closed head injury or post concussive syndrome. Whatever label is used by the doctors, this injury, which often results from automobile accidents, is very serious. The brain, itself, is soft like jelly and is encased in a hard structure, the skull, which is like a box with sharp points facing inward. If you take that box with jelly inside and shake it violently, there is going to be some tearing of the jelly. This tearing happens on a microscopic level. It can occur even without the head hitting a particular object like a windshield during a car wreck. Just the violent back and forth whiplash movement in a typical rear ender automobile accident may cause brain injury.

One of the problems with diagnosing brain injury is that it may not be immediately obvious at the emergency room or to the doctors just after the automobile accident. For example, even if a CAT scan is run, which is the normal way to look at the brain, this will not necessarily show the kind of tearing at the microscopic level which occurs in such injuries. Although sometimes there will be some obvious internal bleeding in the brain on a CAT scan, it is also just as common that brain injury is missed at that emergency room juncture. Typical questions asked of the person in the automobile accident like "did you lose consciousness" are fairly useless. If you, in fact, lose consciousness, you may not know or remember it. Most typically, the patient, after being seen in the emergency room, is given a set of instruction sheets about concussion and that is the end of it. Unless the patient or their family brings the possibility of brain injury to the attention of the treating physicians, it may well be ignored.

Ultimately, the brain injury has got to be diagnosed by a physician, typically a neurologist. The complex symptoms from a brain injury can often be confused for other medical problems. For example, some of the symptoms of a brain injury are headaches, memory loss, loss of concentration, irritability, depression, and other somewhat vague or diffuse symptoms which a family doctor or internist may not treat as coming from the automobile accident and a potential brain injury. Often, it takes a while for the patient and their family to realize that there is something more going on than the usual problems associated with a car wreck. Hopefully, the person who has suffered a brain injury gets in the hands of a neuropsychologist who is trained to determine if a brain injury has occurred. In Virginia, there is only one MD who has specialization in treating brain injuries and is also a psychiatrist. That doctor is named Dr. Greg O'Shannick. He is so busy that it is very difficult to get in to see him even if the person wants to travel to Richmond, Virginia, to get treatment. However, I have seen Dr. O'Shannick work miracles by knowing exactly the right treatment to give people with brain injuries that can greatly lessen their suffering.

Sometimes I, as the personal injury attorney, am called upon to help the client in an automobile accident case to realize that they may have a brain injury. Although I typically try to stay out of medical decisions for my clients who have been involved in car wrecks, this is one area where some attorney involvement may be required. Unlike knowing to go to an orthopedist for a bone injury, most typical people who have not been involved in a serious car wreck before may not realize that brain injuries are a real problem and are treated by certain limited medical specialists. More information about brain injury in Virginia (VA) can be found at www.biav.net, the site for the Brain Injury Association of Virginia (VA).

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

AMA Guidelines For Permanent Partial Impairment Ratings Are An Important Piece Of The Personal Injury Puzzle

John Cooper — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 16:12:04 GMT

As a personal injury lawyer, it is important to use the AMA guides to permanent partial impairment to your client's advantage. AMA is the American Medical Association, which is the primary national professional group for doctors. They publish and periodically revise a book that sets forth how to quantify permanent partial impairments of various parts of the body after an injury. Most orthopaedic doctors, who are the primary specialists for bone and musculoskeletal injuries, are familiar with this set of guidelines. Personal injury lawyers need to be very familiar with them as well to make sure that they use them whenever possible to help get maximum compensation for people who are hurt in car wrecks and other injury cases.

There are essentially two types of impairment guidelines within the rating system. One type is based upon diagnosis of the injury saying if you have had a herniated disc in your back with surgery and have certain residual symptoms, that you get a certain percentage of permanent partial impairment rating. The other set of guidelines looks at range of motion problems to evaluate how permanently injured the person is. The minimum ratings for injuries are between 3 and 5 percent.

It is extremely important that the lawyer be aware of how the guidelines will likely come out in his client's case where there are permanent injuries . Then, in an appropriate case, the attorney can ask the doctor to do an AMA impairment rating. Often, this requires a separate doctor visit for the orthopedist to have the most recent information about the plaintiff's continuing injury. Obviously, the doctor has to be paid for his time in analyzing these issues and issuing a written report. The personal injury law firm can pay for this forensic examination as a client cost advance. This means that the client does not have to pay for it out of their pocket, but will reimburse the firm at the end of the case. Typically, the fees charged by orthopedists for such an evaluation are not insignificant, likely ranging from several hundred dollars to over $1,000.00 depending upon the community.

Because of the standardized and objective way that AMA impairment ratings are done, the insurance companies evaluating automobile wreck cases must pay attention to them. Having this evidence of permanent injury confirms the value of the case and can often result in more money for the client than the same injury file without this proof. To the extent the injury case has to go to trial, some very strong arguments can be made from this evidence of injury. For example, you can say that a person is like a valuable, famous painting. If you take a painting and cut 20% out of it, you have essentially destroyed the work of art. Given that some paintings sell at auction for $20 million dollars, what is a damaged human life worth? These kinds of proof and argument in serious injury cases are often the difference between a significant win and a less than satisfactory result.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

Ski Injuries Can Be Severe

John Cooper — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 12:40:46 GMT

Skiing is a fun winter-time sport that the whole family can participate in. However, skiing injuries can be permanently disabling. The use of helmets while skiing has greatly improved safety on the ski slopes. Skiers often collide with each other and fixed objects like trees. If you have a helmet on, you greatly increase your odds of avoiding a permanent, disabling brain injury or even death.

A case in the past few years against the Wintergreen Ski Resort in Virginia resulted in a multi-million dollar verdict. A girl ran into a snowmobile operated by the resort's staff. Unfortunately, the girl suffered severe brain injuries, which permanently disabled her for the rest of her life. The amount of the verdict surprised the insurance defense lawyers for Wintergreen.

Our firm successfully handled cases against ski resorts, including Wintergreen in Virginia. My law partner, Francis Hajek, had a case where a woman skier was hurt because of mistakes made in the lift operation by the youngsters hired by the Resort to run this important, and potentially very dangerous, equipment. Our client suffered severe knee injuries requiring surgery. We got a substantial verdict for her. One of the key issues was overcoming the defense of assumption of the risk. This doctrine holds that if a person voluntarily takes on a risky activity, they cannot complain if they get hurt from that adventure. In this case, the judge wisely decided that the risk she assumed at skiing was not the same as assuming the risk that Wintergreen would negligently run the lift causing her an injury. In fact, ski resorts often depend upon cheap foreign labor, but do not bother to give them sufficient training in the important equipment that they are asked to operate.

Some states such as Colorado have complete bans on any suit against a ski resort no matter how negligent they are. The State of Colorado does this to protect its skiing industry at all costs. Evidently, it does not matter to that state if consumers and tourists are hurt, as long as the money keeps rolling in.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

Structured Settlements

John Cooper — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:32:36 GMT

In a big recovery from a wrongful death or injury matter, structured settlements can make a huge difference for the client.

Structured settlements are an important thing for a personal injury lawyer to know about and to explain to a client in any significant case. Structured settlements are an option under a special provision of the federal tax law that allows money received from personal injury settlement to get special tax treatment. Most personal injury settlements or verdicts are not taxable when received by the client. However, once the client invests the money, then any interest or return on the proceeds is taxed. What structured settlement does is allow the client, the personal injury victim, to put money with an insurance company to grow tax free and to be paid back to the client tax free in the future. This preferential treatment for structured settlements is only available if the client chooses to put the money aside right away at the time of the settlement. If the client receives the money directly himself first, he can no longer do a structured settlement. Thus, it is extremely important that a lawyer handling a serious personal injury matter discuss structured settlement with the client at the time of any settlement.

Structured settlements can be done with amounts as little as $4,000.00. Typically, clients choose not to do structured settlements unless the settlement proceeds to them are in the hundreds of thousands. A special case arises where there is a child or an incompetent person who gets the injury money. Then, a structure may make sense and should be discussed with the parents or guardian, even when lower dollar figures are involved. A good personal injury lawyer should document that he has talked to the client about structured settlement any time a child or an incompetent person is involved or on any significant settlement of a personal injury or wrongful death case.

Unless lawyers routinely handle files resulting in recoveries of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, they may not be as familiar as they should be with structured settlements. Our firm has a lot of history with dealing with such big cases. Because we have a familiarity with structured settlements, we are in a better position to help the client make a good decision for themselves in this regard. Structured settlements are never forced on the personal injury client. Rather, the process is one of educating the injured client as to investment options that may be more beneficial to the client long after the personal injury lawyer's involvement is over. One thing we do is put the client who was hurt in touch with a company which brokers these structured settlement deals. The key is that we only recommend using a structured settlement company which works primarily for the plaintiff or the injured person's side of personal injury cases. Other firms specialize in working on behalf of the at fault defendants in these big cases. With a plaintiff's side broker, you know that their loyalty is to the injured person and his family and not to the other side.

There are many complicated issues which requires that you have someone you can trust on your side in doing a structured settlement deal. You need to make sure that the insurance company who is selling the structure is a top rated, secure company. You need to make sure that the rate of interest on the contract is the best possible rate. In big settlements, we make sure that the hurt client is advised about these options, so that he can make a sound judgment for himself. Only after listening in depth to the clients and evaluating their financial and family situation, as well as their health, can a plaintiff's side structured settlement broker help the injured clients to make good decisions.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

The Hospital Emergency Room Is No Place For A Sick Person

John Cooper — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 14:37:57 GMT

Hospital emergency rooms are stretched to the limits, which can lead to medical mistakes.

A 1999 study showed that more than half of all preventable hospital error claims result from mistakes in the emergency room (ER). The main problem is chaos. Hospital emergency rooms are not properly funded and they are treating more patients with fewer resources. Part of the problem is more Americans without health insurance use emergency rooms for primary care and the treatment of chronic illnesses. Because over 46 million Americans do not have any health insurance, they go to the emergency room for treatment of problems which are controlable and preventable. This overburdens the system.

The problem is that if you have a real emergency like an acute injury from an automobile accident, the ER may be too busy to deal with you. Unless you have an open, bleeding wound, you may be better off going to see an urgent care doctor, or even your primary care doctor, if you have one. I have seen many cases where the ER doctors treat an accident victim as if they are a bother. You may be forced to sit for a long period of time, if all you have is back pain.

At the scene of a car wreck make sure to tell the police officer if you are having any pain or even discomfort. Even if you decide not to take an ambulance to the hospital, please make sure that the officer knows that you are shaken up and may need medical assistance. The police report has a section indicating whether you tell the officer that you are hurt or not. Many times a person who is seriously injured is noted by the officer as not being hurt because they decline ambulance services. If you are in any doubt, it is better to go to the emergency room in an ambulance to make sure that you get the care that you need.

In the emergency room, make sure to tell the triage nurse everything about your situtation. Insurance companies will made a big deal of any symptom that you do not indicate to the emergency room staff. For example, if your back and neck hurt, make sure to tell them about both, not just the one that is hurting more. If at all possible have an advocate with you who can help you to get the care you need. The ideal advocate is someone who has composure and can firmly, but politely, make sure that you get the treatment that you need. If you do not get care in a reasonable period of time, you or your advocate needs to speak up to make sure that the staff of the hospital knows that you are still there waiting to be seen.

In an automobile crash, if you do not get treatment at the ER, then you still need to see a doctor as soon as possible. If you fail to see a doctor within a number of days, the insurance company will make a big deal of this. They will say you must not have been so hurt if you did not go and get any medical care in the first day or so. The advantage of going and getting seen right away is so that you will get the medical care that you need and document what was wrong with you right away. If you have any concerns about what kind of health care provider to use, an attorney can help guide those decisions. Attorneys like our firm do not charge any legal fee unless we get a result for you. Accordingly, there is no downside to contacting an attorney soon after an automobile wreck to make sure that your medical care is being properly managed.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper

Should I get medical care after an injury?

John Cooper — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 15:10:59 GMT

One of the initial questions faced by the victims of other's negligence is whether they should seek medical attention.

While the answer to this question is driven by the facts of the particular incident (i.e. the age of the victim, site of the injury, degree of trauma, etc.), early and appropriate medical care will frequently hasten the recovery from a personal injury. This is particularly true when one is suffering from a soft tissue injury. A strain/sprain often results in swelling which aggravate the nerves and muscles at the injury site resulting in pain. Once the pain sets in at the injury site, it becomes a self perpetuating problem as any irritation of the site will act to increase the duration and/or the intensity of the pain which will in turn limit one's ability to use the injured area. In this situation the pain acts as a protective mechanism for the body as it causes one to reduce the use of the injured area which will theoretically allow the body to heal. Early medical care can address this cycle of pain, potentially reducing swelling early on, breaking cycle of pain and impairment before it becomes chronic. For this reason, we urge our personal injury clients to seek medical attention early, provide a full and accurate history to the physician, an accurate description of the cause and extent of their problems. Once a physician has been provided with the information concerning the injury he or she is then in a position to recommend a course of treatment which has the best probability of promoting a quick and full recovery. A delay in seeking medical care may allow the symptoms to become chronic and more difficult to treat. So, if there is a question as to whether medical care should be sought, err on the safe side and seek medical treatment. If medical care will not assist recovery the doctor will let you know; however, in all likelihood it will it will put an injured person on the road recovery faster with less chance of setback.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by John Cooper