St Helens Medical Negligence Solicitors – No Win No Fee Claims Lawyers Guide

Medical negligence St Helens, Merseyside

Medical negligence St Helens, Merseyside

If you’re looking for a medical negligence lawyer, you may be overwhelmed by your choices and not know where to start looking. This guide could help you if you’re looking for medical negligence solicitors in St Helens, Merseyside by offering tips about what to look for and questions you can ask of the solicitor you’re considering using.

If you would like to discuss how we are able to help you begin a claim, then please call 0800 652 3087 today. Alternatively, to find out more before calling, please continue reading.

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How Do I Find A Good Medical Negligence Solicitor?

Before choosing a personal injury lawyer to take on your case, you should consider whether you might be eligible to claim compensation. If you can tick of the below three points then you will have a valid claim for medical negligence.

  • You received some form of negligent treatment from a medical professional;
  • Which caused you to suffer an injury, illness or made your existing condition worse; and
  • Happened within the last 3 years which is the medical negligence claims time limit.

If this sounds true in your case then you could ask friends for a recommendation, read solicitor reviews or ask your family for advice about choosing a solicitor or you could give us a call to remove the hassle of finding a solicitor. We offer free legal advice on making a claim and could advise you on whether you have a good chance of success or not. We also work with a panel of medical negligence solicitors who cover the area of St Helens.

Throughout this guide we’ll provide examples of medical negligence to help you and give you advice on what to look for and what to ask when speaking with any potential solicitor about your case.

Do I Need To Choose Between Solicitors In St Helens?

You might think that, “I need to find medical negligence solicitors in my area”, but that’s not always the cases. Many modern solicitors offer a service where claims are handled over the phone and email to remove the need for face to face meetings.

This means you don’t have to choose a local solicitor in all cases, and you could use one anywhere. Remember to look for a solicitor with experience in medical negligence cases and ask if they have any recent examples of cases similar to yours.

Will I Require A Medical Exam?

In all claims for personal injury, you are required to undergo an impartial assessment with a medical professional. This will form the base of your claim and confirm the type of medical negligence you received as a result of a health care professions actions or omissions. If you choose to work with our panel of medical negligence solicitors when making your claim, we will ensure you don’t have to travel far for your medical assessment. We can do this because we have a panel of doctors and specialists around the UK. In the St Helens area, we could use:

David Pontefract
St Helens Chiropractic Clinic,
St Helens, WA10 1HQ.

Jessica Spaulding
Strathdone Limited,
75 Corporation Street,
St Helens, WA10 1SX.

How Helpful Is It To Read Reviews Of Solicitors I Am Considering?

Medical negligence solicitor reviews can be a useful starting point in your search for a solicitor, but they won’t provide you with all of the information you need. You might be able find out if previous clients were happy with the solicitor, the number of updates they received or the amount of compensation they received but you might benefit from directly speaking with any solicitor you’re considering, to find out:

  • How the solicitor proposes to handle your case.
  • When they will update you.
  • And if they have any idea of the amount of compensation they hope to receive for you.

Common Kinds Of Medical Negligence Claims

Over the coming sections of this guide we’re going to show you some scenarios and examples of medical negligence which a personal injury solicitor might take on. This list isn’t exhaustive, so if you don’t see an example similar to yours, don’t worry, we could still help you.

Negligence By General Practice Doctors In St Helens

In general, GPs manage to work out what’s wrong with a patient, offer them treatment or send them to hospital for test or treatment.  On many occasions they do this within the first 10-minute appointment.

However, there are cases where a doctor doesn’t manage to diagnose the problem, or it takes a lot of appointments to get to the correct diagnosis. In these cases, if the delay in treatment caused by diagnosis errors causes the patient to suffer, then compensation could be sought by the patient. You can read more about GP negligence by following the link at the bottom of this guide.

Neglect, Negligence And Care Home Deaths

Care home staff are equipped to deal with all residents who require a bespoke level of care, which means that there are set procedures for health and safety that should be adhered;

If a patient is injured or suffers because the procedures weren’t followed, then they could sue the care home for their suffering. For instance:

  • Patients suffering bed sores because they weren’t moved enough. Bed sores have the potential to lead to life threatening infections such as septicemia and osteomyelitis.
  •  Avoidable bruises and fractures sustained while being lifted or moved incorrectly.
  • Patients who become ill or suffer adverse side effects because they weren’t given their prescription medicine on time.

Errors Or Gross Negligence In Surgery

If you require surgery to treat a medical issue, or choose to have cosmetic surgery, the team treating you will usually let you know about any problems that could occur. You could be asked to sign a waiver too but even if you do, you could still be able to sue if the surgeon injures you during surgery because of a negligent act.

If they have failed to use suitable equipment, not followed procedure or made a mistake which led to you suffering, then compensation might be possible.  Here are some examples of surgical negligence:

  • If any of your healthy internal organs are injured during surgery to other parts of the body.
  • You require further surgery to remove items left inside you following an operation.
  • You suffer complications because suturing was inadequate.
  • Or you wake up during surgery because anaesthetic levels weren’t managed properly.

Childbirth Injuries And Negligent Midwife Care

Many years are spent training and mentoring before a midwife can be in charge of the delivery of a baby. The training they, and other medical professionals, receive is so that they are aware of the correct procedures to follow during childbirth, even when something goes wrong.

If any member of the delivery team is negligent and either the mother or baby becomes injured as a result, then compensation might be sought for the injuries. This might be because an error wasn’t spotted or wasn’t dealt with correctly or because a procedural error occurred.

Some common birth injuries to babies include:

  • Cerebral Palsy
  • Oxygen deprivation. (Hypoxia)
  • Cuts, marks and bruises caused by forceps.
  • Fractures or hip dysplasia.

Or injuries to the mother which might result in a personal injury claim include:

  • Pain caused by anaesthetic mistakes.
  • Damage to organs during a caesarean section.
  • Perineal tears.

St Helens Hospital And Clinic Negligence

All members of hospital staff have a duty of care towards patients and visitors in the hospital. Management carry out risk assessments and create health and safety procedures in order to avoid such circumstances.

If staff fail to follow these procedures and a patient ends up suffering, then it could be possible for compensation to be sought for any injuries or illnesses caused by their negligence.For example:

  •  Unhygenic environment cauing a person to become ill because of a super bug such as MRSA.
  • Advserse side effects caused by incorrect medicine being administered.

Cancer Negligence

It’s becoming more and more common for many cancers to be curable, treatable or manageable these days, due to modern detection and treatment methods. With many cancers, so long as treatment starts early, the prognosis for patients can be good.

A delay in diagnosis or treatment can mean that the cancer advances more which results in the patient suffering worse symptoms, the treatment required being more painful or, in the worst cases, the cancer becomes untreatable.

Therefore, any suffering caused by a delay in treatment could mean that a cancer negligence claim is made if the delay was caused because a medical professional failed to spot the cancer or refer the patient for tests.

Please call if you think you may have suffered because of medical negligence in the North West which caused your cancer symptoms to worsen.

Dental Negligence

When visiting a dentist’s practice for a check-up, medical treatment or a cosmetic procedure, you’re owed a duty of care by all of the dentist’s staff. This means they are obliged to ensure your safety wherever possible during your treatment.

This can be achieved by ensuring all treatment is carried out using the correct procedures, suitable equipment (which is well maintained) is used and hygiene standards are maintained.

If the duty of care is breached, which leads to you suffering in any way, then you may be able to claim compensation against the dentist for the suffering caused. For more information regarding dental negligence read here.

St Helens And Knowsley NHS Trust Negligence Claims Statistics

In the table below, we’ve listed the number of compensation claims made against the NHS trust operating in the St Helens area.  The data contained in the table comes from this NHS report.

NHS TrustNumber of claimsNumber of IncidentsCNST Damages
St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust6910£9,888,268

The data is from the 2017-18 period and includes claims for NHS negligence.  It doesn’t include private healthcare claims as they do not have to report in the same way.

No Win No Fee Clinical Negligence Claims

You may be worried about how much it will cost to hire a medical negligence solicitor to help with your claim.  You shouldn’t worry though as our panel of medical negligence solicitors offer a no win no fee agreement. With a no win no fee agreement:

  • You won’t need to pay your chosen solicitor for them to begin the claim.
  • There’s nothing to your solicitors if your claim is unsuccessful.
  • If they do win, there’s no need to pay their success fee from your own funds, as they take it directly from the compensation (success fees are limited, by law, to 25% of any compensation).

Hospitals And Clinical Services In St Helens, Merseyside

Our panel of medical negligence solicitors can cover the St Helens area, so we’ve listed some of the main hospitals in and around the area for your information.

  • St Helens Hospital.
  • Whiston Hospital.
  • Newton Community Hospital.
  • Hollins Green.
  • Broadgreen Hospital.
  • Spire Liverpool Hospital.

If you’d like to discuss claiming for medical negligence at any of these hospitals or any other case or medical negligence in St Helens, Merseyside where a medical professional caused you an injury or illness, please call to see if we can help.  Our panel of expert medical negligence solicitors offer a no win no fee claims for any case they take on and specialise in negligence cases.

How To Start Your Claim

If you’d like to discuss a medical negligence case with a member of our team, then you can get in touch by calling 0800 652 3087.  Alternatively, to have us call you back at a convenient time, please fill in this online form.

Where To Find Out More

Now that we’ve come to the end of this guide about finding medical negligence solicitors in St Helens or alternative services, we’ve added some more resources and guides below which we think may be useful.

St Helens Hospital
Marshalls Cross Road,
St Helens, WA9 3DA.
Web: www.sthk.nhs.uk

Inspection Report – In the latest Care Quality Commission inspection, St Helens Hospital was rated outstanding overall.

Cancer Guide – A guide from the NHS that includes the symptoms and treatments for many cancers.

Care Home Negligence – Information about how to make a medical negligence claim for care home negligence leading to injuries or a care home death.

GP Negligence Claim – A guide about suing doctors in St Helens for clinical negligence at GP surgery or St Helens medical centre.

Edited by Charlotte.