Photo courtesy of Flickr
By Emily Roberts
Medical negligence, or medical malpractice as it is sometimes called, does not relate to just doctors. Anyone in the medical and healthcare professions can make a mistake, and cause innocent patients to suffer injuries or illnesses that should not have happened. We all put our trust in these people who are usually highly trained and for the most treat us exactly as they should. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.
Dentists
None of us are too keen to visit the dentist, and some of us positively hate it. What you do not expect is to be mistreated, but it can happen very easily. The dentist could extract the wrong tooth, insert crowns or fillings poorly, miss a gum disease that needed treating or cause nerve damage during a procedure. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the mistakes they could make, there are many more. For instance, what if they slipped with the drill while preparing for a filling? You could end up with a very nasty cut to your cheek that could leave a permanent scar.
Making a medical negligence claim against a dentist is never straightforward, but you will increase your chances of success by using the best medical negligence solicitors available. This is why so many victims of medical negligence turn to The Medical Negligence Experts (who you can read up about on their website: https://www.the-medical-negligence-experts.co.uk/), as their reputation for quality work and successful claims precedes them.
Chemists
So you have visited the doctor, got a prescription and wandered off to the chemists to get the medication you have been prescribed. What if the chemist mixes your medication with someone else’s? They could give you the wrong dosage or tell you to take it the wrong amount of times. Computer errors can lead to the wrong medication being dispensed, and they should not substitute a prescribed brand without checking with the doctor that it is OK to do so.
Medical negligence lawyers sometimes have to deal with cases where the chemist has dispensed medication that is for the wrong age group, perhaps something meant to help the elderly with pain is given to a child in error.
Having the wrong medicine can make your illness worse, create a new illness or in the worst case scenario, be fatal. Chemists have procedure in place to try and prevent these mistakes from happening, but if your chemist has got it wrong and you have suffered because of their error, you should be making a compensation claim.
Physiotherapists
Although most people relate their treatment to back pains or sporting injuries, physiotherapists are highly trained to assist people of all ages, with many different problems. The various types of treatment they provide are meant to help with muscle and tendon problems, particularly when mobility is affected.
If they treat the wrong area because they are negligent in the proper procedures for a correct diagnosis, you could end up in more pain than before you started with them, and could take longer to recover. Medical negligence solicitors will help you to build a case against the physiotherapist, so that you can claim the compensation you are entitled to. For example, you could learn about spinal injury claims due to medical negligence and see how this type of case has been dealt with at the time.
Care Homes
As good as the majority of care homes are, none of us like the idea of having to send a loved one into one, or indeed becoming a resident in one ourselves. When you are faced with this unhappy choice, you need to know that you can trust the home to provide a standard of care that is acceptable, and that your loved one will not be neglected or abused.
Most people in these facilities are there because they need day to day care, but are not bad enough to need hospital treatment. You, and they, have every right to expect good care, and if this proves to be substandard, or they are abused by a member of staff, compensation may be payable. The resident should never get bedsores, and if at the worst they do, they should be identified quickly so they can be treated to prevent infections. A lack of help at meal times can lead to malnutrition or dehydration, and the nursing care should be good enough to stop this from happening.
Sometimes, bad care is due to a lack of training of the staff, and the care home should ensure that everyone working with the residents knows exactly what they should be doing.
Medical negligence claims are treated as a very serious matter when an elderly person, or anyone with mental health issues, is badly treated in a care home. Your compensation claim can help to highlight the deficiencies in care, and stop the same problems happening for someone else. Where care homes of any type are concerned, making a personal injury claim is about more than the compensation that may be due.
All of the above are described as medical malpractice. Don’t suffer in silence.
