jQuery selectors
checking if something were found
HTML
<label for="patient_gender" class="validation_error_message help-block"></label>
JavaScript
var name = "patient_gender";
var errorSelector = '.validation_error_message[for="' + name + '"]';
//console.log(errorSelector);
//console.log(error.html());
var $element = $(errorSelector);
if ($element.length) { // .length
console.log('found')
} else {
console.log('nothing')
}