Medical Negligence - What You Need To Know

Historically, in claims of medical negligence against hospitals or local authorities, as the facts in the past few decades show, courts in England and Wales have been found to be reluctant to award the judgment in favor of a plaintiff.

The necessity of consulting a medical negligence solicitor comes to fore in light of the above fact. In order to determine, whether you have a valid medical negligence claim or not, it is important that you consult the solicitor at the earliest after the event that transpired and led you to believe that you are entitled to medical negligence compensation.

Duty of Care

"The ‘Duty of Care' has a wide legal meaning depending on the nature of the incident. In brief terms a ‘duty of care' is an obligation that any sensible person would have in the given circumstances while acting towards others. When the actions of such a person are made without care, attention, caution, and prudence, the actions are considered negligent. Consequently, the resulting damages may be claimed as negligence in a legal action."

The above definition of ‘duty of care' is self explanatory and it becomes all the more important when applied to health care professionals. Any claims you make against a doctor, hospital or the authority under which the hospital operates, rest on your ability to prove that you were owed. Clinical negligence, in such cases would arise, if you were owed a ‘duty of care' and were not treated with expected, reasonable degree of skill of a skilled medical practitioner.

The ground of a medical negligence claim can arise from factors like careless treatment by the doctor, lack of required training or utter disregard for normal rules associated with the treatment.

Standard of Care

"The degree of care, which a reasonable, prudent or careful person should exercise in the given circumstances. If the standard of care falls below than that established by the law for protection of all against unreasonable risk or harm, the person may become liable for damages as a result of such conduct."

As per the above definition, when the person is a doctor and he treats patients who may lose their lives because of his negligence, the ‘standard of care' becomes all the more important. It is not sufficient to assume that a doctor should know what he's doing.

The sensitivity of the issue also arises from the fact that doctors are a close knit community and they will not accept negligence unless it stares them in the eye. Moreover, doctors stand to lose more in terms of years of education rather than in terms of money, if found guilty of negligence.

The above two factors form the base of your medical negligence compensation claim along with the rest of the details.