What areas does breach of duty of care by a doctor cover?
You may be surprised to learn that medical negligence can occur for a variety of reasons which do not necessarily mean you received an injury or further illness.
What would happen if you went to visit your GP, concerned about a niggling pain or some other ailment? Or maybe it was your child that you took to be looked at. Your GP dismissed your problem after one examination and said you should have no concern. He may have prescribed some medication such as painkillers or antibiotics. Nothing could have been further from your mind than clinical negligence; you placed a certain amount of trust in your doctor and believed that s/he would know how to treat you properly.
You returned to your surgery a week later, your symptoms may have not worsened but neither have they improved. Your doctor scribbled a few more notes and performed another examination. He did not feel your condition was serious enough to refer you to a consultant or other specialist.
Well, you eventually found things became so bad that you landed in casualty one day with a serious complication; you had to be admitted to hospital and lost income.
A lack of diagnosis or an incorrect one both form a case of 'medical negligence' and you may be able to claim compensation for any financial losses caused by this or its long term effects.
There are different ways in which, a doctor can be in breach of his duty of care, for example; a delayed referral to a specialist, failure to get consent from a patient before performing a procedure, general treatment errors, mistakes made during operations. Negligence can also arise out of system errors in the hospital where the treatment took place.
A qualified medical doctor is a member of the General Medical Council. He is required by Law by this governing body to inform a patient when a treatment has gone wrong. For a medical negligence solicitor to succeed in making a claim on your behalf he will need to prove, through the evidence of medical experts qualified in the speciality concerned, that it was more probable than not that:
1. You suffered problems with your treatment that a qualified and compentent doctor just would not have made.
2. The errors caused, or exacerbated, the injury or illness you are suffering as a result.
