When you go under the knife to have cosmetic surgery your surgeon or his/her team should fully explain all of the risks with the procedure. You will no doubt be aware that every operation carries all kinds of inherent risks. There are general risks of pain, chronic pain, scarring, infection etc that are fairly common in most procedures. Even the general risks, which apply to probably all operations can develop and lead to significant injuries and even death. Unfortunately all operations, however minor, carry an element of risk. You do have the right to be notified of the risks in full and the likelihood of the risk actually occurring. Even with cosmetic surgery, you may be entitled to make a claim should things go wrong. This is a specialised area of law and it is therefore essential that you speak to a legal specialist that deals in this kind of work.

Many of these types of claims are often to do with botox or beauty treatment. However claims could be made in respect of any cosmetic surgery should things go wrong; despite the fact the procedure is cosmetic. If you are not happy with the cosmetic surgery or you have been left in undue pain or you have been left with injuries, or if you were not correctly advised about any potential risks / side effects, you may have a genuine claim for compensation.
Read More

In recent years, the number of horror stories about the quality of nursing home and nursing care workers has been explosive. I’ve seen loads of TV programs and read loads of articles about nursing care staff who just don’t seem to care at all about the patients, and even staff stealing and mistreating those in need of the care.

It’s a scary thought – especially for anyone with friends or relatives in a care home.

As a firm of specialist personal injury lawyers, we deal with all sorts of different claims for compensation. We represent victims for compensation against the NHS or private care homes if the care provided is inadequate or negligent. Common examples are failing to properly care for people, such as neglecting basic food, water, and sanitation needs, which can cause a range of health complications to already vulnerable people. Another example could be failing to properly medicate residents, which could lead to existing health problems getting worse.
Read More

For employers, adhering to manual handling regulations is one of the most important things they need to get right. It is so easy to injure your back by using poor lifting techniques or because routes and lifts are not properly risk assessed by employers. There is a significant duty on employers to make sure that their employees are adequate trained and the lifting exercise is risk assessed to take in to account the weight and size of the load, the amount of people needed to assist, the use of mechanical assistance, and the safety of the journey (to name a few common factors!)

As a law firm specialising in accident at work claims, I can tell you that despite the strict rules and regulations in place, employers are still cutting corners and getting it wrong. If you’re reading this I assume it’s because you have injured yourself at work due to manual handling. For the purposes of this blog, I’m going to go in to manual handling alone.

So, as I said earlier, your employer has a duty to risk assess any manual handling activity. If you are going to be instructed to lift something on your own, your employer needs to be confident that:
Read More

Is there anyone on this Earth that enjoys going to the dentist? Really there isn’t anything enjoyable about it, and I get that people hate seeing medical professionals as we are worried about what they’re going to do to us; but going to the dentist is particularly one of those things that people tend to be frightened of. The sound of the drills as you walk through the halls and the waiting rooms…

As specialist injury lawyers we deal with all varieties of personal injury claims. We represent victims for dental surgery negligence, so here’s a little advice about compensation claims for dental negligence.

Firstly, to make a claim, we have to prove that the dentist has provided you with poor or incorrect treatment or an inadequate level of care. This is not always easy to do, as there are a lot of complications surrounding treatment provided by dentists that are not so easy to avoid. Infections are very common, and they are generally accepted as an inherent risk of a dental procedure. If you get an infection after a procedure, it isn’t very easy to make a successful claim given they are often an inherent risk.
Read More

We place our trust in the medical professionals we seek help from to do their best to keep us well. Nowadays there are thousands of conditions and problems that are treated by medication; from the simple drugs like paracetamol to the all important chemotherapy for cancer victims. But what happens when the medication we are given goes wrong? What happens if there is an error made?

Commonly the scenarios are the following:

• You are prescribed the incorrect medication for the problem by a doctor.
• You are given the wrong medication by the pharmacist.
• You were not warned of potential side effects, or not enough investigation was done in to conditions you have or other factors personal to you that could cause an adverse affect (e.g. certain medication could harm during pregnancy).

A medical professional has a duty to properly investigate your symptoms to make sure you are prescribed the right medication. If you are given medication which exacerbates the problem or does not help the problem, you may have a claim if you can prove that the judgment made by the professional was below standard. If other professionals could confirm that they would have treated you in a different way, and that the judgment made by the original professional was poor, there may be a case to answer for. We can normally establish this with expert reports from consultants we instruct as part of your personal injury claim.
Read More

I’m pretty certain that there is no one on this Earth that relishes the thought of going to A+E. I’ve been a few of times, and it’s the same old story – they’re rushed off their feet, it takes hours just to be seen by a nurse, let alone a doctor, and they’ll probably going to discharge you and tell you that you’ll be absolutely fine and its nothing to worry about. Four days later you’re lying on an operating table because that “minor muscular injury” they convinced you that you’d be recovered in no time from is a complex fracture!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not having a go at NHS staff – I think we can all appreciate that the NHS is stretched so very thin, and the nursing staff and emergency care teams are, I imagine, fighting one heck of an uphill battle! It isn’t their fault that things are so bad in the economy that we’re all suffering at the mercy of an underfunded public health system. But irrelevant of whether you’re blaming our dear government or the powers that be in the NHS, one thing remains; standards of care cannot fall below what is expected.
Read More

As Britons, we love to panic sometimes don’t we? We’re the type of society that rushes to our GP when we are feeling a little tense or under the weather. My understanding is that the NHS is encouraging people to make use of help lines and walk in centres. And let’s not even start on getting an appointment with your GP – if you’re lucky enough to get one before a full lunar cycle, you have a very well organised (or quiet) General Practitioner.

With the NHS in general being thin on the ground, it is a real concern that the standard of care that we would expect from our GP can fall. We get a lot of enquires for cases of misdiagnosis from GP’s or being prescribed the incorrect medication. Although we have had claims where it isn’t the GP who has provided the incorrect medication, it’s the pharmacist. Scary stuff… I recall I once went to my GP about a clicking in my back. I was asked to “Google back stretching exercises”. I was pretty angry to be honest.
Read More

Cosmetic surgery is extremely common these days and not just with the rich and the famous. Many people now turn to the surgeons to achieve the body and face of their dreams. Unfortunately, the outcome can be far from the desired one with cosmetic surgery carrying with it so many inherent risks!

To start I shall briefly explain the regulation in place when it comes to these types of claims. Private clinics offering surgical treatments such as facelifts under the Health and Social Care Act 2008 must be registered with the Care Quality Commission. This ensures that the clinics offering these invasive procedures meet a set of essential requirements of safety and quality. One of the main comforts for Clients is that the Care Quality Commission inspects clinics at least once a year and have the powers to impose fines and simply shut clinics down for non-compliance!

Furthermore, surgical procedures are regulated activities and therefore ensure that only appropriately licensed medical professionals may carry out such procedures and if they are found to be unqualified they are liable for prosecution.
Read More

Package holidays are fairly common nowadays. Who wouldn’t want to just pay a single fee for an all inclusive stress free holiday, where you don’t have to worry about booking the hotel, flights, transport, and other things separately. It saves a lot of time.

However there is also another benefit to booking an all inclusive visit abroad – you may be afforded the protection of the Package Tour Regulations in the event something goes wrong.

Under the Package Tour Regulations, if you have an accident abroad, you may have a claim against the package provider. The general prerequisites are that:
Read More

These types of claims would have been quite uncommon a few years ago, but nowadays with the rich and famous openly admitting to have hair transplants, it appears that everyone wants perfect hair. However, as this procedure is relatively new it also means that a lot can possibly go wrong and consequently result in unfortunate injuries or adverse affects.

There are three main ways that a hair transplant can be done, which are:

• Follicular Unit Transplantation – this is where a strip of skin is transplanted from where hair grows.
• Follicular Unit Extraction – this is where hairs are “punched” into the scalp
• Artificial Transplant – this is where synthetic fibres as opposed to organic hair sourced from the scalp is “punched” in.

All three procedures come with inherent risks (as with any cosmetic procedure) and therefore all three can lead to a potential personal injury.
Read More