A medical injury is distinctly different from other types of injury in that it is defined as one that a person experiences during the course of receiving medical treatment, either in a hospital or from a general practitioner. Within this general area of medical injuries there are those that occur as the result of the medical treatment the patient receives failing to meet the standards that we all have a right to expect as patients. These types of medical injury are considered to have been avoidable and to have been caused by negligent standards of care – meaning that either the patient, or their next of kin, may well have a right to seek on applying for medical negligence compensation, as a result.
If this is the case, then the person who suffered the injury, or their next of kin, depending on who is making the claim, should seek legal advice from a reputable company with lawyers specialising in this area. The injury may have been caused by the actual treatment, or by a failure to correctly diagnose a problem and administer the correct treatment, but either of these can represent legitimate grounds for a negligence claim. However, it is important to seek legal advice as soon as it is possible to do so, as medical negligence is not an easy matter to prove, and, in addition, there are time limits on when such cases can be brought. In the majority of cases, a claim for medical negligence will need to be made inside three years of the injury being suffered or of the results of the negligence being discovered.
In order for the negligence claim to be upheld, it is necessary to prove not only that the care received fell below an acceptable standard, but also that this failure directly contributed to the medical injury the patient suffered. Because of the difficulty in proving this, your legal advisors will usually try to find alternative solutions –such as mediation – to the matter, and will not attempt to take the claim further unless strong evidence has been established linking the injury to the treatment received.