If you’ve been injured as a result of negligent 
medical treatment, you may be able to take
legal action for compensation.
You could also take legal action for compensation if you’re the next of kin of someone:
- who has died because of negligent medical treatment
- who can’t take legal action themselves because they don’t have capacity.
You don’t have to use the NHS complaints procedure before starting legal action but you may find it helpful to use it to find out more about what has happened. You can then make a more informed decision about whether to go ahead with a Medical Negligence case.
What is clinical negligence?
Here are just some examples of clinical negligence. You have suffered injury because the healthcare provider:
- failed to diagnose your condition or made the wrong diagnosis
- made a mistake during a procedure or operation
- gave you the wrong drug
- didn’t get your informed consent to treatment
- didn’t warn you about the risks of a particular treatment.
If you’ve suffered an injury as a result of medical treatment, this may be referred to as a ‘medical accident’ or ‘patient safety incident’. This doesn’t mean that your treatment was necessarily negligent. You can claim compensation only if it can be shown ‘on the balance of probability’ that:
- your treatment was carried out negligently, that is, the care you received fell below medically acceptable standards, and
- this directly caused your injury.
It is important to remember that you only 3 years from the date of knowledge of the negligence within which to make a claim.
At Treadstone Law, we have extensive experience in dealing with Medical Negligence cases. One such case was when ‘Miss W’ from Newcastle came to us having received a serious injury relating to potential medical negligence.
We established that, for a number of reasons, the case was likely to run over the three year limitation without urgent attention.
We quickly issued Court proceedings to extend the time (a further 12 months) during which this case could be fully investigated and brought to court, something the Trusts involved were not keen to see happen in view of the likely size of the claim.
It is therefore vital to ensure that any medical negligence claims are made as soon as possible and certainly before three years has elapsed since first injury occurs. If you require further advice on this please do not hesitate to contact us.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space]
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