Bognor Regis Medical Negligence Solicitors – No Win No Fee Claims Lawyers Guide

Medical negligence Bognor Regis

Medical negligence Bognor Regis

If you are unfortunate enough to be injured or become ill following medical treatment, then you may benefit from hiring a medical negligence lawyer to help you claim compensation. How do you choose the best one to help you though? This guide will provide you with all of the information you need to make an informed decision. If you’ve been looking for medical negligence solicitors in Bognor Regis, then this guide should help you decide.

Because our panel of medical negligence solicitors are not based in Bognor Regis but can cover the area with ease, they might be able to help you. To discuss your options today, call us on 0800 652 3087 and speak with one of our specially trained advisors.

We have created this online guide for if you’d prefer to read more about choosing a medical negligence solicitor best suited to your circumstances.

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How To Select A Medical Claims Solicitor For Your Case

As with many things in life, it’s often easy to ask a friend, colleague or family member for a recommendation. While that could help, it doesn’t always follow that the solicitor will be suited to you. You could use the recommendation as a starting point and then follow the advice in this guide to help you decide whether the personal injury solicitor will be as good for your case.

To help you decide whether you could claim or not, here’s a basic definition of medical negligence:

  • Firstly, you need to have received some form of inadequate or substandard treatment from a medical professional.
  • Secondly, the treatment should’ve left you injured, ill or made your existing condition worse than it was prior to the treatment.

There are many types of injuries and claims which you could make including a hospital negligence claim, claiming for compensation for a missed cancer diagnosis and even cataract surgery negligence claims.  In this guide, we’ll provide many examples of acts or omissions of negligence which might lead to a claim.

Compare Solicitors By Reading Reviews

Reviews can be found for just about any product or service these days, some helpful, some not. We believe reviews can act as a great starting point and help you to understand how happy clients were with compensation amounts, professionalism, and the frequency of updates.

However, we still believe that once you’ve narrowed down your search, you should speak on the phone with any potential solicitors to understand how they can help you, what amount of compensation they expect to achieve and how they’ll work with you.  This is the sort of information that a review can’t really provide you with.

What If I Find A Solicitor Outside My Area?

When we hear comments like, “I need to use a medical lawyer near me”, or, “I’ll look for medical negligence solicitors in my area”, we have to explain that firstly, there’s no obligation to do so and secondly, you’ll be limiting your options by doing so.

We say that it’s far better to pick a personal injury lawyer because they specialise in medical negligence cases rather than where they’re based. With modern technology, communication is carried out over telephone and email so there’s no need to meet the solicitor face to face.

To help keep travelling to a minimum, we do have a panel of doctors across the country that can be used to carry out medical assessments.  We’ll provide a sample of those in and around Bognor Regis in the next section.

An Assessment Of Your Injury Could Be Carried Out By Our Panel Of Doctors

Here is a sample of our panel of medical specialists in the Bognor Regis area that could undertake your medical assessment if required:

Phillipa Keech
Forum House,
Stirling Road,
Chichester, PO19 7DN.

Ali Al-Bahrani
Madgwick Lane,
Chichester, PO19 7QL

Muhammad Ather
177 Goring Road,
Goring-by-Sea,
Worthing, BN12 4PA.

Medical Claims Handled By Our Panel Of Solicitors

Over the coming sections of this guide, we’re going to take a look at different examples of medical negligence and help you determine if you could make a compensation claim.

If you don’t see your claim listed, don’t worry as we could still help you.  Please speak with a member of our legal advisors so they can help you determine whether you could claim or not.

Medical Claims For Hospital Negligence

If you’ve suffered an injury, a new illness or your existing illness was made worse because hospital staff failed to spot a problem, didn’t follow normal procedures or were negligent in any other way, then we could help you make a claim. Some examples include:

  • Being prescribed the wrong medicine which caused you to suffer side effects, or your existing condition got worse because it wasn’t treated.
  • Receiving a late or misdiagnosis meaning your condition got worse because of a delay in receiving treatment.
  • Any negligence during surgery that resulted in you being harmed.
  • Or any illness caused because your immune system was weakened by a superbug such as MRSA.

Contact our hospital negligence experts if you’d like to discuss making a claim.

Birth Injury Or Trauma Claims

The maternity ward of any hospital has specially trained staff who should be able to spot, and deal with, any problems during pregnancy or childbirth. They have a duty of care to protect both the baby and mother during all stages of the birth.

If they fail in their duty of care by not spotting a problem, not reacting to it or carrying out non-standard procedures without good reason, then a claim might be possible. Please speak with one of our specialist advisors if you, your baby, or both of you were injured because of a negligent act during childbirth.

Dentistry Negligence Injury Claims

Dentists are unusual in some respects because they diagnose problems, prescribe treatments and carry out remedial procedures all in the same place.  Where a GP would send a patient to a hospital, the dentist can carry out a lot of surgical procedures in their own practice.

Therefore, they have a duty of care to ensure the safety of their patients throughout the whole process. If they fail to spot a problem, don’t follow standard procedures or cause their patient to suffer because of any other negligent act, a claim for compensation might be possible.

For instance, if a patient is undergoing surgery on a particular tooth and the dentist damages other teeth or gums, causing the patient to suffer pain and possibly require more treatment then a claim for dental negligence could be made.

Negligent Surgery

Surgeons, and cosmetic surgeons, will often warn their patients about any risks prior to the operation taking place. The patient will usually need to sign a consent form to agree to the procedure and to confirm they understand the risks.

That doesn’t mean though that a claim can’t be made if the surgeon injures them due to some sort of negligent act. Here are some cases which could lead to a claim:

  • If the surgeon, or surgical team, fail to remove any foreign objects from inside the patient following surgery which causes the patient to suffer pain and require remedial surgery.
  • When the patient suffers pain or wakes up because of an error with the anaesthetic dosage.
  • If the patient suffers injuries to unrelated internal organs causing them to suffer pain or require surgery to reduce the symptoms.
  • Or if suturing (or faulty surgical clips) fail and further surgery is required to reduce the pain or symptoms.

General Practice Doctor Medical Negligence

While GP’s might suffer from a high workload due to increasing patient numbers in some areas, this does not mean they can’t be held liable if they make a mistake which leads to a patient suffering unnecessarily.

While GPs deal with many patients daily and resolve their issues appropriately, in cases where they make a mistake a claim might be possible.  For example:

  • If they fail to spot a problem at the first opportunity and the patient has to keep coming back to the practice with the same symptoms. If the delay in treatment causes the condition to get worse then a claim might be possible.
  • The same is true if a delay due to a misdiagnosis in treatment causes the patient to suffer.
  • Or if the patient suffers undue side effects and become ill because they’ve been prescribed the wrong medicine.

Neglect In A Care Home

It can be heartbreaking to put a loved one into a care home. While you might take time choosing the right home, you still need to put faith in the medical team that run the care home. You have to trust that they’ll meet their duty of care to provide adequate treatment and keep your loved one safe during their stay.

Some examples of neglect in care homes which could lead to a claim include:

  • Injuries caused by falls due to incorrect lifting techniques being used.
  • Pain and suffering caused by bedsores due to the patient not being moved regularly.
  • Any form of injury caused by care home abuse.
  • Or if a resident becomes ill because their prescription medication wasn’t dispensed properly.

Late Diagnosed Or Misdiagnosed Cancer

When a patient receives a cancer diagnosis these days, it doesn’t always mean that they’ve got a bad prognosis, especially when the cancer is diagnosed early and treatment starts swiftly.

A medical attorney could begin a compensation claim for missed diagnosis if a doctor, cancer specialist, dentist, nurse or other medical professional had the opportunity to diagnose the cancer but failed to so and that delay caused the patient to suffer more pain or for their prognosis to worsen because of the delay in treatment.

If you believe you’ve suffered because of a cancer misdiagnosis, then please call our team to discuss your circumstances.

Data For Claims Made Against Western Sussex NHS Trusts

In the table below, you’ll find the latest compensation figures for NHS negligence in the Sussex region which Bognor Regis is part of.

Healthcare ProviderClaims in 2017/2018Number of Incidents 2017/2018
(*Means less then 5)		Damages Payments
Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust58*£7,141,976.01

The source of the data is this spreadsheet from the NHS. If you want to know more about the NHS complaints procedure or the medical negligence claims process, please get in touch with our team.

Hospitals In West Sussex

As you now know, our panel of medical negligence solicitors can cover the Bognor Regis area. Therefore, we’ve provided a list of hospitals that cover the region:

  • St Richard’s Hospital.
  • Worthing Hospital.
  • Southlands Hospital.
  • Ravenswood House Hospital.
  • BMI Goring Hall.
  • Uplands Hospital.

If you’d like to discuss a claim against any of these hospitals or a Bognor medical centre, then please get in touch with one of our experts.

No Win No Fee Bognor Regis Medical Compensation Claims

To alleviate the financial burden of making a medical negligence claim, our panel of expert medical negligence solicitors all offer a no win no fee service for claims that they take on.

This means that:

  1. You do not have to pay them anything upfront to begin the claim.
  2. There will be nothing to pay them if they fail to win you any compensation.
  3. And, if they do win, you won’t need to find the funds to pay them yourself as they take their success fee from the compensation.

Success fees are used to pay for the solicitor’s time and effort in winning your case. They are limited to a maximum of 25% of any compensation but could be less.

Contact Us

Having read this guide, if you’re ready to discuss beginning a personal injury claim with us today, you can call 0800 652 3087 or fill in this simple online form so that we can call you back.

Helpful Resources

Here are some useful guides and resources which we hope you’ll find helpful.

St Richard’s Hospital
Spitalfield Lane,
Chichester,
West Sussex, PO19 6SE.

Inspection Report – The latest inspection of St Richard’s hospital by the Care Quality Commission.

NHS England – The body which plans for the future of the NHS.

Care Home Health and Safety – Guidelines and safety procedures for care homes from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).

Personal Injury Claims Calculator – A useful document that explains compensation amounts that can be paid during civil litigation claims.

Dental Services –  A useful site for finding dental practices in Bognor Regis.

Dental Negligence Claims – A guide with regards to the different types of dental negligence claims that could be made.

Written by Brett.

Edited by Charlotte.