What is Medical Negligence?

If if a patient has suffered injury as a result of medical treatment, this may be referred to as a medical accident, adverse incident or even a patient safety incident. This does not mean that the treatment was negligent. Whilst better quality of care or safety measure may have prevented patient injury, it may be that the incident itself may not have been avoided.

The law allows for patients to make a compensation claim if it can be demonstrated that on the balance of probability that the patient treatment was carried out negligently and that this directly caused the injury. In legal jargon these tests are called liability and causation These are difficult criteria to fulfill and require expert opinions from health professionals to establish whether the claim will succeed.

We take great care not to over-promise clients and create an unhelpful situtation at a stage when the client has already suffered and needs support.If we believe a client has good prospects we will tell them.

Examples of Medial Negligence:

• Fail to diagnose a condition or making the wrong diagnosis.
• Making a mistake during a procedure or operation.
• Giving the wrong drug.
• Fail to warn about the risks of a particular treatment.
• Fail to obtain treatment consent.

Contact us if you believe you or a loved one have suffered a medical accident due to negligence.