Description
Nurses, EMTs, at-home caregivers, and first responders have a high risk of injury while on the job. Unfortunately, many people who suffer from medical professional injuries don't receive the compensation they deserve. Attorney Gilbert Fisher can help you pursue the appropriate benefits and protect your rights when you file a case with the Work Comp Appeals Board.
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Many people probably don't realize, but medical care professionals like nurses and nurses aides and caregivers, and people who work with patients actually have a pretty high rate of injury. A lot of times if you're dealing with let's say, for example, a UPS driver who's delivering packages, they have all of the support and the tools that they need to make sure that when they're lifting heavy boxes, or doing whatever it is that they do that they have safety equipment in place. But healthcare professionals and caregivers are dealing with people and patients who are sometimes quite unpredictable. If you have a patient who's semi-conscious and who's flailing around, or who maybe slips off the gurney, and you have to jump in and try to catch them, you don't have time to use body mechanics. And so we find that nurses and nurses aides and caregivers sustain a lot of injury in the course of performing that in that environment.
As a work comp attorney, nurses and medical professional personnel, and caregivers, first responders, EMTs, this is a category of worker that, quite frankly, doesn't get treated very well by the work comp system. This is because they typically are good earners. They earn a lot of money, and they typically need all of their health and strength to perform their duties. If they're left with almost any type of physical limitation as the result of an injury, they often are no longer able to continue to do their job. In addition, they often have as a high earner don't have a lot of options to replace those earnings if they have to change careers as the result of an injury. For that reason, their cases are particularly challenging. And the sooner they get professional help from a work comp attorney to counsel and to advise and to plan, the better it is.
It's important to have a lawyer on your side for two or three main reasons. The first being that an attorney will help you file the proper paperwork to protect your rights under any applicable statutes of limitations. A lot of times people feel like if they filed a claim with the work comp insurance carrier of their employer, that that's all they need to do. But unfortunately, sometimes time can bar the recovery of benefits if that's all you do. In order to fully protect your rights, you need to file a case with the Work Comp Appeals Board and attorneys obviously help you do that. Beyond that, attorneys also counsel with you, explain your rights, explain the law, help you understand what you can expect, and they also help you resolve issues when a work comp insurance company is not following the rules.
Medical caregivers and professionals in the medical field are an important part of our economy here in California, and they deserve special protection. When they're injured, they need all the help that they can get to help protect their rights, and they should consult with a work comp attorney early in their case.