Medical Negligence and Hospital Infections

Attending hospital for a serious medical condition or an operation is a highly traumatic experience for most people. Apart from the experience in itself there has been so much publicity in the press over recent years about unclean standards and hospital infections such as Clostridium Difficile (C Diff) and MRSA that many people fear that their health will be made worse by the hospital rather than improved.

Even if we can put all those factors aside, there is the added anxiety that the nurses or doctors or surgeons will make a mistake, that they will be negligent in carrying out our treatment. Although by far the majority of health workers are dedicated people with a high degree of skills, as history has demonstrated to us, there are also the few rogues scattered amongst them.. Some highly publicised cases have featured mass murderers masquerading as devoted medical practitioners, and nurses suffering from mental conditions such as Munchausen's by proxy syndrome that has driven them to deliberately harm patients.

Of course these are very rare cases, or so it is hoped. What is much less rare is the mistake, the accident, the incorrect drug, the correct drug but the incorrect manner of its delivery that can leave a patient permanently paralysed, the overdose or under-dose, the wrong operation, the wrong kidney removed. Unfortunately these are not lust nightmares. They happen regularly. Quite often the results of these instances of medical negligence are spotted before too much harm is done and are corrected, or more sinisterly are noticed and covered up so that the patient and their family never discovers what really went on.

Sometimes it can simply be a lack of care. Nobody notices that the poor old gentlemen has not been able to feed himself for the past week; nobody notices that the old lady has not been moved regularly and has developed bed sores that have become infected.

But all these events are down to medical negligence; medical negligence is illegal and those who suffer as a result of it are entitled to compensation. However the route to proving that medical negligence has taken place and obtaining compensation for this fact is a difficult and torturous practice.

--
Of course these are very rare cases, or so it is hoped. What is much less rare is the mistake, the accident, the incorrect drug, the correct drug but the incorrect manner of its delivery that can leave a patient permanently paralysed, the overdose or under-dose, the wrong operation, the wrong kidney removed. Unfortunately these are not lust nightmares. They happen regularly. Quite often the results of these instances of medical negligence are spotted before too much harm is done and are corrected, or more sinisterly are noticed and covered up so that the patient and their family never discovers what really went on.