Medical negligence & personal injury – What is the difference?

A medical negligence claim can only be made against a healthcare professional. The healthcare professional could be anyone from a GP, nurse or surgeon, to a dentist, optician or psychologist.

The negligent act or failure to act may well have taken place in a hospital or similar environment, but could be somewhere else if you received treatment at home or in public, such as if a paramedic was treating you after an accident.

In both instances, it is usually clear that a duty of care was owed to the claimant. However, proving that this was breached requires an opinion from a medical professional who is also aware of the test used by the court.

If you are a passenger in a car and the driver behaves recklessly resulting in a crash that causes you injury, it is clear that they breached their duty of care to you. Similarly, if you slip on a puddle of water at work not clearly signposted, again it is relatively easy to determine whether your employer has breached their duty of care.

In medical negligence claims it is often more complicated to prove a breach. This is because whatever was done or not done is judged against what a “reasonable person with the requisite skill” would have done in that situation. If it is determined that no reasonable body of healthcare professionals would have made the same decisions relating to diagnosis or treatment, then it is considered substandard.

This can be difficult to determine and requires the input of relevant medical experts on whether the actions taken that led to the claimant’s suffering can be criticised.

The additional complexity of proving a medical negligence claim, which requires expert medical evidence, means that you are always best advised to contact specialist medical negligence solicitors rather than a generalist for a number of reasons:

Strong medical insight

A lawyer who conducts clinical negligence cases will have a deeper medical knowledge than a traditional personal injury solicitor. The medical negligence solicitor will quickly be able to determine what questions they should ask the claimant to ensure that they have all of the information which the medical expert will need. They will also know which medical experts are required.

Conversely, a non-specialist may not have sufficient experience to know what to ask the claimant nor to understand what medical specialist is best instructed. This can result in:

• Claims that could have been successful not succeeding

• Unsuccessful claims being dragged out, wasting the time of all involved and sadly getting a claimant’s hopes up

Trusted network of contacts

In addition, it is important that the medical experts contacted are both specialists in the area required for the claim in question, and that those experts are familiar with legal tests. This helps streamline claims and confirms that they will provide relevant insight that will support investigations.

An experienced medical negligence firm, including our team at Gadsby Wicks, will have access to a wide network of trusted medical and other experts that they can immediately reach out to when the claim requires their input. They will have likely worked with the firm before and therefore can be relied on to provide solid advice about a claim’s chances of succeeding.

In comparison, a generalist personal injury firm may not have such a network established. This means they will have to reach out into the unknown, which again slows down the process and adds a layer of uncertainty to the claim, and can lead to significant delay or even undersettling of a claim.

Know what is required and how to adapt

Again, solicitors with significant experience in medical negligence are well-positioned to ask crucial questions of claimants that generalist solicitors might not consider.

For example, dopamine agonists, a treatment used to help those with Parkinson’s Disease and other movement disorders, are known to carry a small risk of causing a loss of impulse control in some patients. This can cause those patients to develop addiction to things such as gambling or alcohol.

A medical negligence solicitor would know to ask about this in their investigation, as it could influence the financial losses they have suffered as a result of this negligence.

A specialist solicitor will also know when it is best to determine causation of the injury before they establish a breach of duty, such as the aforementioned example of a claimant seeing multiple GPs and needing to ascertain which of these could have made a difference to the claimant’s prognosis.

Claims proceed faster

Fundamentally, working with a specialist medical negligence solicitor ensures that the process of making a claim is quicker, smoother and more thorough than the approach taken by a generalist:

• The right medical experts are sourced from the outset an approved, comprehensive database of contacts

• Medical experts are asked relevant, clear questions so they can provide a proper opinion about the claim

• Evidence is acquired swiftly to determine the strength of a claim before proceeding further, preventing any wasted effort

As a result, this makes making a claim more tolerable and more likely to achieve the right outcome.