Specialist Solicitors

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Clinical Negligence Law

Compensation Calculation

NHS Complaints

Accident & Emergency

Coroners Inquests

GP Negligence

General Surgery

Cancer Diagnosis

Brain Haemorrhage

Birth Injury

Hypoglycaemia

Obstetrics & Gynaecology

Cauda Equina Syndrome

Cosmetic Surgery

Female Sterilisation

Vasectomy Failure

Peace and quiet are two things that you will never find in the accident and emergency department of an NHS hospital. The typical scenario in A&E often borders on chaos and usually involves numerous patients often waiting for a considerable period of time and treating them are tired and harassed junior medical personnel trying to attend to their medical needs as best as they can. A new patient registers in an accident and emergency room every ten seconds, 24 hours a day and seven days a week non stop.

The disturbing aspect of this situation is that many of the health workers – the doctors, the nurses and the medical technicians – assigned to A&E are often relatively inexperienced. To make matters worse the supervising physician in the department may not be an A&E consultant. This situation is reasonably typical of the underfunded National Health Service.

Given the fact that the day-to-day scenario in A&E is chaotic and that the majority of health workers manning A&E do not have enough experience in dealing with the numerous situations facing them, it is not surprising that mistakes in diagnosis and treatment occur frequently. Often the health worker dealing with a patient does not have enough knowledge and misinterprets the signs and symptom and even a competent but stressed and overworked physician may be mislead into making the wrong diagnosis or an overworked medical technician may make an error in conducting the tests necessary for the diagnosis.

The fact that A&E is overworked and under funded does not mean that health workers, inexperienced or not, cannot be made accountable for any careless mistakes that they make. Also lacking in knowledge is not a valid excuse and is not something that health workers can hide behind. If a patient feels that he or she has been the victim of medical negligence in A&E then a compensation claim can often be made.

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