Medical Negligence
Whether you’ve experienced a serious breach of trust or have been a victim of malpractice, we’ll treat your claim with the urgency and dignity it deserves.
Doctors, hospitals and other health care providers have a duty to provide competent professional practice due to the potential for devastating consequences if they don’t. When that standard hasn’t been met, affected patients may be entitled to be compensated for their experiences and losses.
These claims are not just limited to doctors, but any professional health service provider, including chiropractors, physiotherapists, dentists, general practitioners, surgeons, nurses, and hospital staff generally.
These claims require a negligence lawyer with experience and expertise as injuries of these kinds give rise to special considerations that must be addressed to ensure a claim is successful, including:
- Whether or not the injury resulted from an accepted risk associated with the procedure or service;
- Whether proper investigations were conducted at an early stage;
- Whether there was a failure to diagnose;
- Whether the service was provided in a manner widely accepted in Australia by peer professional opinion as competent professional practice;
- Whether the negligent act gave rise to damage or loss that would not have occurred without that negligent act.
As this is a complex and highly specialised area of the law, it’s essential to enlist the services of an experienced medical negligence lawyer from the very start.
What you can claim
- Misdiagnosis of your medical condition.
- Providing the wrong treatment for a condition.
- Errors made during an operation or other surgical procedure.
- Injuries suffered in childbirth.
- Medication errors.
- Failure by hospitals or doctors to give patients proper attention.
Claims for damages typically cover
- Pain and suffering and loss of enjoyment of life.
- Past and future treatment costs and other expenses.
- Loss of wages and other income – for the past and future.
- Care and domestic assistance.
What to do if you think you have a medical negligence claim
Contact a medical negligence lawyer
You may not know where to start if you think you have a medical negligence claim and that’s understandable as it’s a highly complex area of the law. We recommend that you contact a team of expert medical negligence lawyers to help you prepare your claim from the very start.
Understand the process
We’ll ensure that every step of the process is communicated in simple, easy to understand language, so you know exactly what is happening and when.
Find out if your claim is eligible
We will work with you to establish whether the standard of care you received fell below the standards reasonably expected from a medical professional, making you eligible to claim for medical negligence compensation.
FAQ: Medical negligence
Click below to find an answer to these frequently asked questions.
What is negligence?
In everyday life, negligence generally describes our failure to take reasonable care of something. Often, these are nothing but momentary lapses, for example, when we accidentally lock our keys inside the house or we burn dinner on the stove. These things happen to all of us, all of the time – it’s only human.
Negligence in law, however, refers to a breach of the duty of care we owe towards other people. More precisely, our failure to take reasonable care to prevent harm to someone. In these cases, negligence is often determined based on what a ‘reasonable’ person would do. For example, driving under the influence and risking a fatal car crash is not usually something a ‘reasonable’ person would do, so the driver would have likely engaged in negligent behaviour.
What is medical negligence?
Medical negligence occurs when a medical practitioner or institution breaches the duty of care they owe to their patient. This means the standard of care they’re obliged to provide is not met, resulting in negligent treatment and potential physical or psychological injury to the patient. Medical negligence claims can extend to:
- Doctors
- Hospitals
- Hospital staff
- Health service providers (e.g. chiropractors, physiotherapists, dentists, nurses)
- Other healthcare providers
What is negligence in nursing?
Nurses, just like other healthcare professionals, have been trained to adhere to certain clinical practices and standards of care. As such, they are expected to act with the knowledge and skill that’s reasonably expected of someone with their level of education and training. Should a nurse not uphold these standards – whether intentionally or unintentionally – by, for example, administering medication late or mishandling a patient, this could be considered negligence.
How can you prove medical negligence?
In a legal context, negligence describes the lack of reasonable care taken to prevent a patient’s injury or loss. That’s why, if you’re looking to sue someone for medical negligence, you have to prove they have breached their duty of care and that your injury or loss has been caused by their actions. This means showing that:
- There has been a duty of care in those circumstances (e.g. while you were a patient at a hospital).
- Their actions did not meet a reasonable standard of care for someone in their field, which is also referred to as ‘breach of duty’.
- You suffered damage (e.g. injury or loss) as a result of their actions – or lack thereof.
- The damage suffered was, in fact, as a result of their breach of duty.
Your expert team
Medical negligence compensation is a highly specialised and complex area of the law. That’s why a specialist practice like Masselos & Co Lawyers, with over 50 years of experience, can ensure that you get the best possible outcome for your case.
We’ll help you get the compensation you deserve. Send us an email or give us a call for free today.
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