I don’t think there are many people out there who enjoy going to hospital (if there are any at all!) – but from time to time we all need to have things done to keep us fit and healthy or help us get back to normal if something awful happens.
But what if something happens that we didn’t expect to happen? What if you went to hospital for some straightforward treatment and ended up with some form of serious injury or adverse problem? Can you make a claim for hospital medical negligence for what has happened?
Can you claim?
Whether you can claim or not normally boils down to proving whether you are a genuine victim of negligence or whether you are the unfortunate victim of an inherent risk.
Most treatments and operations carry with them inherent risks, and it is the duty of the NHS to correctly warn and advise you of any risks involved with any procedures or treatments they recommend to be carried out.
So if something does go terribly wrong, you do not automatically have the right to make a NHS hospital medical negligence claim – it’s all about whether a mistake has been made.
What’s a mistake compared to an inherent risk?
Examples of a mistake that should not have happened at all:
- A surgeon accidentally cuts something during the operation that was not an inherent risk.
- A medical practitioner fails to accurately read results from scan and fails to diagnose you.
- You are given incorrect treatment for a problem.
Examples of inherent risks could be:
- A surgeon cutting a part of you during an operation as it couldn’t be helped.
- A scan result not clearly identifying a problem.
- A course of treatment failing to work where there is an expected failure rate.
Reading the two different sets of points above you can see they are kind of one in the same but on the opposing ends of the scale. This is on purpose to show you that having a claim really is all about being the victim of negligence as opposed to being the unfortunate victim of something that could go wrong. Infections are common as a result of operations, and in pretty much most scenarios making a claim for an infection is hard to do because it’s an inherent risk of having an operation. It’s not easy to stop an infection occurring.
What if I wasn’t warned about an inherent risk?
Well this is very different – whilst suffering from an inherent risk may not automatically entitle you to claim, if you were not warned of such a risk there may be a claim to make.
The main thing to ask is – would prior knowledge of the risk have altered your decision as to whether to take the treatment or not? If it would have, there may be a claim to make.
Call us 0800 634 7575 to get your medical negligence claim started today.
