The healthcare field is necessary for people to stay healthy, but unfortunately, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals may make it difficult to trust them and carry out their necessary courses of action. Some doctors are self-serving or choose to focus on the most important patients, for example. Other times, politics of hospitals come into play. Still, other times, unskilled physicians who have a notorious history of bad practices may still be allowed to treat patients.

Here are 5 ways that hospitals and health care centers may have mistreated you if you were a patient.

Poor Testing Choices

Often, doctors will see you but not listen to your complaints of certain symptoms. You may request that a test be run to target those symptoms or you may want to cover all your bases. Tests, however, can be expensive and take long periods of time to run and have the results returned. Doctors, therefore, are less eager to run the tests and potentially waste time, especially if the results are negative or inconclusive.

These choices can drastically impact your health. You should always ask a doctor to specify on the chart that it was his or her choice to not run tests, which can protect you and show that you were potentially mistreated.

Prescribing the Wrong Medication

Doctors may sometimes prescribe you the wrong medication or give you an abundance of meds that you do not need. Sometimes they even try to treat sicknesses purely with medication; for example, you might just get ibuprofen for joint and muscle pain, but the real issue could require surgery. Generally, doctors will fall back on the medication route if they feel that it will cover many options. They may not know exactly what is wrong but will prescribe meds that cover numerous symptoms.

Ask You to Complete Harmful Actions

After an accident or some kind of sickness, your doctor may clear you to return to normal duties or may even ask you to participate in some kind of therapy. This therapy can easily do further harm to you, especially if your body is healing slowly or is not ready to take on heavier burdens.

It is most commonly seen when doctors tell you that you can return to work within a few weeks, especially if you participate in manual labor.

Nurse Negligence

One of the worst ways that a professional healthcare individual can potentially mistreat you is by being neglectful or negligent in his or her duties. Bedside nurses have failed to change sheets, have administered the wrong medication, have not listened to complaints of pain, and in some extreme cases have even been abusive towards patients.

“Negligence by hospital staff and doctors, whether it’s a misdiagnosis or abuse, can be sufficient grounds for a lawsuit,” said Daniel Azizi, founder of the Downtown LA Law Group.

Less Trained Workers Administering Care

It is common for residents and trainees to take on some brunt of the workload in hospitals and other places. More often than not, these people will shadow the professionals, but they may take small, inconsequential cases from time to time. Unfortunately, there are moments when doctors are overloaded and assign tasks to these individuals that are way over their heads; they may not be able to handle such a task.

Do Your Research

It’s important that you do some research before picking a new doctor or going to the hospital. You may have a simple problem that can be fixed with generic over the counter medication and rest. Mistreatment of patients is a serious problem, and you should be sure that you don’t fall victim to it any time soon.