If you believe that you are the victim of medical negligence, whilst you may be within your legal rights to Sue The NHS, what are the consequences on The NHS NHS Medical Keyboards and the Doctor or Consultant of doing so? This article explores the consequences and your legal rights.
How Do You Know If You Can Make A Claim For Medical Negligence?
To determine whether any negligence has been committed you need to be able to prove that:
- The NHS owed you a duty of care to look after you whilst in their care
- The NHS have failed in this duty and;
- This failure by The NHS to provide the duty of care has caused your injury, pain and suffering.
Will Anyone Lose Their Job?
If you have established the grounds for a claim for clinical negligence you may then be concerned that if you do Sue The NHS, the person who carried out the medical treatment, or failed to provide treatment when they should have done so, will lose their job. But is this fear well founded? In reality, it is only in extreme cases that the doctor or consultant will lose their job. Most occasions of negligence will not lead to a dismissal but only a warning. However, regular acts of the same negligence could lead to dismissal, but if the person concerned continues to make the same mistakes again and again, aren’t they better off not providing the treatment for the sake of other people like you in the future?
Will Suing The NHS Cause The Body To Suffer Financially?
Ultimately The NHS will have to pay any compensation ordered to be paid by it. However, this is no different from employer’s having to carry insurance for accidents. The main difference is that The NHS funds its own insurance and so does have to pay for any medical negligence claims. If many medical negligence claims are made in the same hospital for the same negligence, by handling their own claims the hospital can see any trends and take action to ensure claims of the same type do not happen in the future. In time, by continually improving their “best practices” there should be less opportunities to Sue The NHS, leading to less payouts for compensation and less pain and suffering for innocent victims of medical negligence.