Investigating your claim
How can Medical Negligence cause injury?
What do we do?
What has to be proved?
Negligence or “an error of clinical judgment”
Causation
What information will I have to provide?
How can Medical Negligence cause injury?
Injury can be caused as a result of:-
- Delayed diagnosis
- Poor care provision
- Incorrect treatment for the condition
- Negligent performance of an operation or procedure
- Incorrect interpretation of a test result
What do we do?
Before we can advise you whether there has been a failing in the standard of clinical care provided (negligence), it will be necessary to obtain copies of all hospital and GP records. This is normally dealt with on a voluntary basis but, if not, an application can be made to the Court to obtain an Order for records to be provided. When we have received all the medical records and have had the opportunity of considering them in detail, we will instruct an independent medical expert to explain what happened and, where appropriate, to make specific criticism of the treatment provided.
What has to be proved?
We must show that the treatment in question fell below the standard of a reasonably competent medical practitioner in the relevant area of medicine. It is a defence to an allegation of medical negligence to show that a substantial body of reputable practitioners in the appropriate area of medicine would have carried out treatment in the same way as the doctors in providing the treatment.
Negligence or “an error of clinical judgment”
It is not a defence to an allegation of negligence to say that the injury was as a result of an error of clinical judgment.
“A doctor is unlikely to succeed by saying that he was not negligent because he had made an error of clinical judgment, an error of judgment is not by itself incompatible with negligence”
Maynard v West Midlands Regional Health Authority [1985]
Causation
The burden of establishing that the conduct complained of caused physical harm or financial loss rests on the person making the claim. The test most generally accepted by the Courts is the “but for” test: but for the negligence would the harm have occurred in any event?
In a claim for clinical negligence the issues of causation are not usually clear cut. This is because treatment will have been sought as a result of illness that was suffered before medical advice and treatment was sought.
We have to prove that injury and/or loss was caused by the negligence. This link between cause and injury is not as obvious as it sounds and has to be supported by independent medical evidence.
What information will I have to provide?
At the start of any claim, we will need to ask you many questions to cover:-
- Personal details
- Medical details
- Treating hospital or health professional
- Date(s) of treatment
- Why you think that the treatment you received was negligent
- Financial information – to decide on the best way to fund your claim
Summary
This is only a very short summary of what is a complicated medico-legal topic. All claims for medical negligence require a detailed assessment of the factual, medical and legal issues surrounding the circumstances of the treatment. Raleys can help you find a way through this maze.
