Medical Negligence

Medical negligence is where the standard of care provided by a medical professional falls short of the standard of his or her peer group and you suffer damage as a consequence.

A claim for medical negligence comes under the Personal Injuries Proceeding Act and the relevant time limitations are:

You must provide a section 9A(2) notice known as an initial notice. This notice sets out basic information regarding your claim. The part 1 Notice of Claim must be given within one year of the initial notice.

The general limitation period of three years applies to medical negligence claims as it does to all personal injuries’ claims.

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Meaning of Negligence

Medical Negligence is where the standard of care provided by a medical professional falls short of the standard of his or her peer group.

Negligence on its own is not enough because you must suffer damage arising out of that negligence.

Lawyers talk of causation which means that the negligent act complained of must be causative of the problem that you are suffering.

Doctors will often defend medical negligence claims on the basis that even if the medical professional was negligent, the outcome would have been the same in any event. A good example of this is failure to diagnose cancer.

Let’s assume for example that a patient consults a doctor regarding some pain. Let’s assume that after two or three consultations he fails to diagnose cancer. The patient attends another doctor who quickly picks up on this and makes a diagnosis of cancer. The patient then brings a claim for medical negligence against the original doctor for failure to diagnose the cancer.

In the scenario presented above, there is the possibility that the doctor will defend the claim on the basis that even if the cancer had been diagnosed at the first consultation, the outcome would have been the same, by which is meant that the cancer would have advanced in any event.

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