Accident and Emergency
This is often the first point of contact a patient will have with the NHS due to an illness or after an injury. The staff who practise in emergency medicine have skills in prevention, diagnosis and management.
Case reports
T -v- Calderdale & Huddersfield NHS Trust
The Claimant was taken to the Accident & Emergency Department at Calderdale Royal Infirmary after being knocked down by a car
and was diagnosed as having an unstable short spiral fracture of the right femur. Her leg was placed in a splint which had to be re-applied because it was the wrong size. She was admitted to the children’s ward of the hospital. She remained in hospital but there was a failure to monitor the healing process of her leg in the splint, to the extent that poor union of the femur was achieved and her leg was bent when the bone was healed and had a boney protruberance. The bowing of the leg also entailed shortening of the femur and consequently the leg itself.
The case settled for £28,000.00 which included damages for care provided to the Claimant by her parents, the cost of some reconstructive surgery on her scarring and damages for her psychological distress, as well as for the leg injuries overall and for the otherwise would have been unnecessary.
Nurses may soon require insurance for clinical negligence claims
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 00:00 | 
| 
| 
Nurses and midwives may be forced to obtain indemnity insurance cover in the same way as doctors. At present nurses are only vicariously liable through their NHS employers.
A draft consultation paper proposes that nurses and midwives should have compulsory insurance to cover medical negligence claims.
Unions are worried that if these proposals were to go ahead there would be a definite shift in liability in a clinical negligence claim from the NHS to the individual health care professional. The onus of obtaining indemnity insurance would be placed on the individual nurse or midwife and not the hospital. Nurses and midwives would need this compulsory insurance before they could be registered to practice. At present, nurses rely on insurance cover from organisations such as RCN and Unison. This cover alone would be inadequate under the new proposals.
There is concern that the cost of this individual insurance may be prohibitive for nurses and midwives. The plan may also open the floodgates to many claims against individual nurses for medical negligence. Also, nurses may be wary to participate in advanced procedures in the fear of insurance repercussions in the event of a claim against them. At present no decision has been made on this issue and the publication of the document has been postponed.
Notes
John Pickering and Partners LLP
About Us
Our clients are people who have suffered injury as a result of a medical accident in the UK. We are clinical and medical negligence solicitors. We handle negligence claims against hospitals, GP’s and other medical practitioners for clients across the UK.
We try to obtain maximum amounts of compensation.
We are committed to providing public funding (previously known as Legal Aid) and have a franchise from the Community Legal Services Commission. This means that they have looked at the firm carefully and approved of the way we work. They consider that we are medical negligence claims specialists. They trust us to handle medical accident claims properly.
If you are not eligible for public funding, we can offer a Conditional Fee Agreement, also known as a ‘no win, no fee’ agreement with insurance. We shall check the best method of funding your claim.
All 3 of our offices (Liverpool, Manchester and Halifax) are accredited by the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers.
Claire Horton is an experienced clinical negligence solicitor. She continues to practice as an independent funding ajudicator for the Legal Services Commission and acts on a pro-bona basis for the AvMA helpline.
We provide free initial advice to people seeking information about a potential clinical negligence claim.
If you need advice about a clinical negligence claim, contact us now for information about making a claim for compensation.