People in the UK suffer and sometimes die every day due to medical negligence through not receiving the correct care.

Being involved in the medical industry is a difficult and demanding job and illness is never as it appears in textbooks; important factors may be hidden and complications may happen suddenly. Human failure is a fact of life and what most people want when things go wrong is an explanation and an apology. However compensation is often wanted when people can’t accept what has happened.

Health professionals react defensively when it comes to accusations of medical negligence. Medical negligence cases are hard to win and take a very long time to resolve as the courts are keen to protect the health professionals.

Medical negligence cases are extremely complex and as all medical treatment carries a risk and patients are warned of this risk before treatment is carried out. Medical negligence means the standard of care has fell below the general standard that is expected. The law awards compensation if it can be proved that treatment was negligent. Medical negligence not only covers the care given by doctors and nurses; it also covers the care given by dentists, opticians, psychiatrists, midwives and physiotherapists.

Medicine is a complex area as opinions often differ. Some of the most common cases of Medical Negligence that are seen are:

• Infectious diseases due to unclean conditions

• Complications during surgery

• Claims involving children

• HIV/AIDS

• Care of the elderly in the NHS and nursing homes

• Pressure sores

• Misdiagnosis

• Stillbirth

The worst case situation with medical negligence is when a patient dies due to a mistake on the doctor’s behalf. Healthy body parts have also been removed in the past due to incorrect diagnosis on your doctor’s behalf.

If you decide to go ahead and put a claim in for compensation there are certain things that need to be done during the investigation stage of your claim so that your solicitor can advise you as to whether or not your cases has a chance of winning. The first step of this is to get a statement from you. This statement will outline your account of exactly what happened, in many cases this statement is often of a long length.

Medical records are the second piece of documentation that your solicitor will need. These include your GP’s records as well as the records of any hospital treatment you may have received.

The last documentation that your solicitor will require is a medical report. This medical report will be from a specialist medical practitioner and will outline if the standard of care given fell short of that which is considered to be reasonable in this country. Your solicitor will also need evidence that medical negligence is what caused or contributed to your injury.

You should also remember that putting a claim in for compensation is not the same as putting a compliant in against a medical professional. To make a complaint against a health care worker you have to register your complaint, the details for doing this can be found on the NHS website.