How to prove hospital negligence

When you or your loved one is receiving care from any medical professional, you trust them to provide good care and treatment. However, medical professionals can and do make mistakes where they fail in their duty of care to patients. These mistakes can have considerable consequences on a patient. 

A failure could be a delayed diagnosis, nursing care, a misdiagnosis or misinterpretation of imaging. Often when this happens, the patient experiences a worsening of their condition or injury, potentially resulting in long term consequences. 

When we are looking to assess a claim for hospital negligence, we first consider whether there has been a breach of duty of care. This generally splits into two categories: 

• Doing something that they should not have done.
• Not doing something that they should have done. 

If this can be established, then we must prove ‘causation’. This means the avoidable pain, suffering, and loss of amenity that you have experienced is as a result of the negligent care. The focus of a claim for hospital negligence is the difference between how life looks now versus how it ought to have looked had you received the right care in the first place. 

To prove hospital negligence, we would first arrange an appointment with you to discuss what has happened and your concerns. Following which we would obtain your medical records as these are the most contemporaneous account of what happened and should contain important information regarding your diagnosis and treatment. As long as these look supportive of the claim, we would then invite entirely independent medical experts to provide their opinion on the care you received. 

How can we help?

If your have suffered hospital negligence, we can help you with your next steps. Contact our expert medical negligence solicitors by calling 0330 123 1229, completing our contact form, or sending us an email via info@smithpartnership.co.uk.