More than 6,000 patients needed treatment as a result of mistakes by medical staff in NHS hospitals in England, the Daily Mail has reported. This is a sharp rise over the 2,193 patients recorded ten years ago.

The types of mistakes occurring most frequently during medical treatment apparently include accidental cuts, punctures and perforations.

Compensation Claims

In 2015, the NHS Litigation Authority reportedly paid out a total of £1.48 billion in compensation following medical negligence claims in England, which is a 27% increase over the previous year.

The media frequently publishes reports of people fighting for and being awarded compensation after they were the victims of medical negligence.

Substandard Care

In one recently report case, a woman sued Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust after receiving substandard care at one of its hospitals in 2012.

According to the report on KentOnline, Clare Wadey had been admitted to the hospital after suffering from a urinary tract infection. She became increasingly unwell while in hospital and a week later developed a severe case of sepsis.

She had kept medical staff informed of her worsening symptoms, but they failed to take corrective action or consider the possibility of sepsis. This is despite recommendations from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that medical staff should consider sepsis to be a possible development for all patients suffering from an infection.

Ms Wadey eventually came to the conclusion that she wasn’t going to receive the treatment she needed from the staff around her, and had to ask for an ambulance to be called from her hospital bed. When it arrived, she was found to have a dangerously high temperature and was rushed into intensive care.

Ms Wadey received compensation for the poor treatment she had received, and the NHS trust apologised, saying improvements had been put in place to help ensure no other patient would go through such a traumatic experience.

Failures by Medical Staff

The Guardian reports on the tragic case of a boy who developed severe brain damage at birth as a result of negligence by medical staff during his labour and delivery.

According to the boy’s mother, if the medical staff attending the birth had detected her son’s slowing heart rate and carried out an emergency caesarean, her son might have been born a normal, healthy baby.  However, their failure to act meant that he now suffers from cerebral palsy and has a limited life expectancy.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS have now acknowledged that mistakes were made by its staff. The boy’s mother has been awarded compensation amounting to £11 million, which will be used to help care for her son and provide him with the best possible quality of life.

Contact Us

If you have suffered a personal injury and would like to make a claim for compensation, then contact our expert personal injury lawyers today. We can help you receive the compensation you deserve.