Medical Negligence
How Long Will My Claim Take?
Claims for medical negligence are just about the most complicated and difficult accident claims you can make. It's not enough for you to feel you've suffered at the hands of bad medical treatment, you have to be able to prove that the treatment you've received was in some way lacking. In other words, that the doctors, nurses, pharmacists or dentists that were treating you allowed their standards to slip below that which is frankly unacceptable and that, as a result of this lapse, you have suffered long term pain, discomfort, inconvenience or illness. This negligence could take the form of a wrong diagnosis, a missed diagnosis, a failure to keep medical equipment properly sterilised, a delay in delivering the proper treatment or providing access to the right practitioner and many other things. The treatment in question could have taken place anywhere from a large NHS hospital to a small private clinic or a GP's surgery.
Many people who feel they may have been the victims of clinical negligence are discouraged from taking action by the thought of taking on 'the medical establishment' - the feeling that doctors, nurses etc will just close ranks against any outside complaint. This shouldn't be the case, however. A case of medical negligence is, if anything, even more distressing than a personal injury caused by someone's bad driving, for example, since visiting a doctor or hospital means placing total trust in the hands of whoever's treating you.
At its core, a medical negligence case is just like any other - it's a question of collecting the facts of what happened to you and gathering and presenting the details of the case in such a way as to prove that you've been injured through no fault of your own. Because of the complexity of medical matters this may take longer than usual - in some cases a period of years before you even reach court.
Rest assured, though, that our specialised medical negligence solicitors will pursue your case as hard and for as long as it takes, until you get the compensation that's genuinely owing to you.