I don’t know about you but I have always been very grateful for the NHS. It’s clear that there are numerous pressures and inefficiencies but the care has always been good, sometimes it’s been outstanding.

Having said that, things do happen and there are situations where a patient may experience medical negligence. Medical negligence means that a patient was not treated in a way that prevented harm from coming to them. That harm then led to another injury. These injuries can be varied, and depend on the issues that the patient faced at the time.

Medical negligence claims also come in several different forms. Organisations like The Medical Negligence Experts offer assistance dealing with a large variety of legal issues, helping sue individuals or hospitals. They also offer assistance for no win no fee medical negligence claims. Some of the more common medical negligence claims include birth injuries, untreated fractures, surgery damage, incorrect records, misdiagnosing, and infection.

Birth Injury

Birth injuries are injuries that happen to both the mother and the new child. These can be quite serious. For infants, they can include everything from issues with the umbilical cord to cerebral palsy. Mothers may experience a variety of complications as well, sometimes including vaginal tearing. In all of these cases, many experts recommend taking action as quickly as possible. Not only is this going to help both the mother and the infant more quickly, it will also fit well within the required timeframe for reporting medical negligence.

Untreated Fractures

While doctors and other healthcare professionals are not perfect, another very common case of medical negligence involves fractures or breaks that are either not diagnosed correctly or not noticed at all. In both cases, this can lead to serious injuries in the patient. While this can be especially dangerous in neck and back injuries, breaks and fractures can get worse if the proper care is not taken to reduce the pressure on the injury.

Incorrect Records

Having correct medical records is a critical part of patient care. If the healthcare professionals have incorrect information, they will not know about allergies, medications, or other critical details. Since some medications do not react well with others, this is an important piece of keeping patients safe. Correct records also allow medical staff to know what tests are requested for which patients, and be able to communicate each patient’s medical history to other staff. Having incorrect records could lead to serious problems, including not being aware of allergies or the patient’s history, making this another case that leads to a medical negligence case.

Surgery Damage

Surgery damage does not refer to the little things that can go wrong during a surgery. The fact that things can turn out differently than expected is why it is important to have informed consent before a surgery is performed. This means that the patient is aware of the risks and other factors that impact their surgery. Sometimes, however, a doctor makes a mistake that is not a foreseeable issue, and this often leads to a medical negligence case. These can include things like operating without needing to, leaving something in the body, not getting the correct forms, and operating on the wrong part of the patient. These all can lead to significant health issues that might not have been an issue before the surgery occurred.

Misdiagnosing

Misdiagnosing the cause of a patient’s pain or illness is another common case for a medical negligence suit. If a doctor or other professional neglects to deal with or see the condition that is causing the patient’s issue, this can often become much more serious. This often occurs with cancers, which then have additional time to grow and mutate. If they had been caught, correctly identified, and addressed earlier, they might not have gotten so bad.

In many cases, these incidents lead to a medical negligence case. This can also be a result of not carrying out a complete examination of a patient, allowing part of the patient’s health issues to go unaddressed.

Infection

Hospitals lead to a different set of negligence claims. One common claim is infection gained while staying in hospitals or other medical locations. While a healthy human body is capable of combating an infection, the patients in hospitals are not healthy. If a hospital does not properly clean and sanitise their building and the people in it, the patient can get sick very easily. If hospitals are not kept clean, they also run the risk of developing a superbug, which is a virus that is immune to antibiotics. These viruses can be dangerous to anyone, but in a hospital setting, they are can be worse.

Although there are a wide variety of ways that patients can experience medical negligence, these are some of the most common cases. When someone is beginning the legal process of bringing a medical negligence case to court, it is important to have medical records that show clearly that the injuries or illnesses that came after the negligence would not have occurred otherwise. There are also cases where the injury was a result of an accident, not necessarily neglect. By using a no win no fee claim service, a prospective client can get more information about their specific claim.

We all hope we will never be in this position, but should the worst happen there are options available to you.