Medical Negligence

How To Know If You Have A Medical Negligence Claim

A medical negligence claim may arise if you have suffered an injury as a direct result of medical mistreatment or lack of care that you have received.

This may also be referred to variously as a ‘medical accident’, ‘adverse incident’, or ‘patient safety incident’.

It is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that the medical treatment was ‘negligent’.

While better quality of care or safety measures might have prevented your injury, it may be that the incident itself was in fact completely unavoidable or a recognised or known risk of the treatment.

Medical negligence claims are more complex than any other type of personal injury law, a fact that is recognised by the Irish legal system.

Unlike almost every other type of personal injury compensation case, the Injuries Board have no jurisdiction to deal with such claims. Section 3(d) of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board Act 2003 excludes claims “arising out of the provision of any health service to a person, the carrying out of a medical or surgical procedure in relation to a person or the provision of any medical advice or treatment to a person.”

Dermot McNamara & Co Solicitors have expertise and vast experience in such matters. Our experienced solicitors will handle all claims with care, sympathy and complete professionalism. We put your interests first,  ensuring the most appropriate and effective legal specialists are handling your claim. We will give advice on pursuing a case and take you through the process of determining if a negligence action exists, gathering legal and medical evidence to prove that medical negligence has transpired. We provide the utmost of professionalism, care and attention in each case that we deal with.

You can read up on our most recent Medical Negligence Cases here.

Medical Negligence Information

In order to establish negligence a plaintiff  must prove:

• The defendent owed him a duty of care.
• There was breach of that duty.
• Damage flowing from the breach, which is not too remote, is causation.

Since 1957 The Bowlam Test has been a benchmark by which professional negligence has been assessed. It is based on the the direction to the jury of a high court judge, McNair J, in Bolam V Friern Hospital Management Committee.

‘A doctor is not guilty of negligence if he has acted in accordance with a practice accepted as proper by a responsible body of medical men skilled in that particular art. Putting it another way around a doctor is not negligent if he is acting in accordance with such a practice, merely because there is a body of opinion that takes a contrary view”.

Contact us now and it would be our pleasure to advise you on your particular situation.

Dermot Mc Namara Medical Negligence Solicitors, Dublin, Ireland