Choosing a medical negligence solicitor can be quite a daunting task especially when you realise that choosing the right one could have an impact on whether you win your case or how much compensation you could receive. If you’re looking for medical negligence solicitors in Royal Tunbridge Wells then this guide could prove useful. We’re going to provide advice on what to look for and what to ask when picking the solicitor to help you make a claim.
Our panel of medical negligence solicitors are not based in Royal Tunbridge Wells but can easily cover the area so we might be able to help with your claim. Whether it be for NHS negligence, medical blunders at a Kent hospital, dental negligence or care home cases, we could help. If you’re ready to begin, why not contact our team of specialists today on 0800 652 3087?
For more information before contacting us, please carry on reading this handy guide.
Choose A Section
- How You Could Choose The Right Solicitor For A Medical Negligence Case
- Reviews May Help You Compare Solicitors Services
- Should I Claim With A Local Area Solicitor?
- Examinations Of Your Injuries May Be Carried Out By Our Panel Of Doctors
- Examples Of Medical Negligence Claims People Make
- Birth Injuries To Mother Or Child
- Nursing Home And Care Home Negligence
- Dentist And Dental Practice Negligence
- Surgical And Post Operative Care Negligence
- Hospital Negligence
- Misdiagnosed Cancer
- GP And GP Practice Negligence
- Data And Statistics For Negligence At Tunbridge Wells NHS Trusts
- No Win No Fee Clinical Negligence Compensation Claims
- Hospitals In The Tunbridge Wells Area
- Contact Us
- References
How You Could Choose The Right Solicitor For A Medical Negligence Case
Before looking at how to choose the right medical negligence lawyer to help you, it’s important that you verify whether you could claim or not. In general, to be eligible to claim for medical negligence you’ll need to prove that:
- You received substandard, negligent or bad treatment or care from a medical professional; and
- The negligent treatment caused your condition to get worse or you sustained a new injury or illness.
Also, and just as importantly, you need to ensure your claim falls within the medical negligence claims time limit of 3 years. If it’s outside of that, you may still be able to claim, call us to discuss your circumstances as you still may be able to claim. Ideally, you’ll contact us much sooner as it can sometimes take a while to gather the complex evidence required to support a medical negligence claim.
When you think you’re ready to claim, the next step is choosing a personal injury lawyer. There are many ways to do this including asking friends for recommendations or reading reviews, both of which can prove helpful. In this guide, we’ll provide further information about what you might want to look for when choosing a solicitor and also explain why you’re not obliged to use clinical negligence solicitors in Royal Tunbridge Wells.
If, after reading this guide, you have any questions, please get in touch with one of our medical negligence experts who’ll be happy to discuss your claim and offer free legal advice about your next steps.
Reviews May Help You Compare Solicitors Services
As mentioned in the last section, when beginning a personal injury claim, medical negligence solicitor’s reviews can be a really helpful tool for starting your search. Things to look for in reviews include:
- Whether clients were happy with the overall professionalism of the solicitor.
- If they felt that they received regular updates about the progression of their claim.
- And, importantly, whether they were happy with the outcome of the claim.
Once you’ve read the reviews though, we’d highly recommend speaking with the solicitor to find out how they’ll manage your case and what cases they’ve handled that were similar to yours recently.
Should I Claim With A Local Area Solicitor?
Some people get tied up with the idea that “I have to use medical negligence solicitors in my area”, but there’s absolutely no need. If anything, thinking like that reduces your options dramatically.
With modern communication methods, there’s no need to meet the solicitor face to face so the location of their office is irrelevant. This means that you can find a solicitor that specialises in medical negligence compensation claims and whether they can demonstrate recent successes in cases similar to yours.
Therefore, a medical negligence solicitor in Tunbridge Wells isn’t really a vital part of your search when finding your legal representative, their experience and specialism is what is important.
Examinations Of Your Injuries May Be Carried Out By Our Panel Of Doctors
We aim to reduce the traveling for anybody who we help with a medical negligence claim. To do this, we have a panel of doctors who can carry out any medical assessment required as part of your claim for medical negligence compensation.
Here is a sample list of our panel of doctors who could help with claims in the Royal Tunbridge Wells area:
Laura Sanchez Pallares
Groombridge,
Tunbridge Wells, TN3 9PY.
Salman Baig
Atman Clinic,
8 Chilston Road,
Tunbridge Wells, TN4 9LT.
Kashif Aziz
55 Calverley Road,
Tunbridge Wells, TN1 2TU.
Examples Of Medical Negligence Claims People Make
Our panel of expert medical negligence solicitors can take on any type of claim where an injury or illness was caused by the negligent act of any medical professional. For your information though, over the next few sections, we’re going to provide examples of some negligent acts which might lead to a compensation claim.
Birth Injuries To Mother Or Child
All of the medical professionals that help a mother and baby during pregnancy, labour and post-birth undergo a lot of specialist training to ensure they know how to deal with all types of pregnancies and births ranging from the simplest of deliveries to the most complex.
They are trained to ensure they know the correct processes and procedures to follow to protect the wellbeing of both mother and baby whenever possible. In cases where they fail to follow the correct procedure, spot a problem, call for support or react incorrectly to a situation, and this results in mother, baby or both being avoidably harmed then a claim for compensation could be possible.
If you, your baby or a loved one were injured during childbirth or are having to deal with life-changing illnesses, then please speak with one of our specialist advisors to discuss making a claim.
Nursing Home And Care Home Negligence
Care home staff have to care for each resident in different ways depending on their needs but at the same time have to ensure they follow the same basic health and safety guidelines for every resident.
If they fail to meet their duty of care and the resident becomes ill or injured, then compensation might be sought if the act that caused the injury is deemed negligent. It could be down to a mistake made by staff rather than a deliberately negligent act, but a claim could still be made.
Some examples of care home negligence claims include:
- Injuries such as bed sores caused by staff failing to regularly turn bed-bound patients.
- Illnesses caused when medication hasn’t been dispensed at the correct time.
- Bruises or fractures caused by falls where staff failed to follow the correct lifting techniques.
- Or any suffering caused by care home abuse.
Dentist And Dental Practice Negligence
As with other medical centres, a dental practice and the staff there have a duty of care to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of patients wherever possible. This is done by maintaining hygiene standards, using the correct equipment and following the correct safety procedures. If a dentist, dental nurse or hygienist fail to follow these steps and cause the patient to suffer, then a claim for dental negligence could be possible.
For instance:
- If a patient suffers pain because the anaesthetic dosage was incorrect.
- When any gums, nerves or teeth are damaged during treatment.
- If the patient suffers an infection due to poor hygiene standards.
- Or if the dentist fails to diagnose oral cancer at the earliest opportunity.
Surgical And Post Operative Care Negligence
Surgery can be a pretty worrying procedure to undergo, especially when the surgeon explains the risks involved and asks you to sign a consent form.
Even though the risks have been explained, any negligent act or omission of surgical staff which leads to you suffering an injury or becoming ill could lead to a compensation claim. Here are some surgical negligence examples:
- Items of surgical equipment being left inside you that cause pain and require further treatment to remove.
- If you wake up during surgery and suffer pain due to an anaesthetic mistake.
- If an inadequate or faulty surgical clip fails and causes you to suffer again and you require further treatment to rectify the problem.
Hospital Negligence
You’d probably expect a trip to the hospital to be successful meaning that your illness or injury is treated, and you start to recover. You probably wouldn’t expect that a member of hospital staff would cause you to suffer a new illness or injury, but it can happen.
If it is caused by any form of negligence, then you could seek compensation from the hospital. Examples of hospital negligence can include:
- If a doctor fails to spot a problem causing a delay in treatment and meaning you suffer more, or your symptoms worsen.
- When the hospital pharmacy dispenses the wrong medicine causing you to suffer side effects or your condition to worsen because of a lack of treatment.
- Any form of surgical injury caused by a mistake or negligent act.
- Any illness sustained because your immunes system is weakened by MRSA or similar superbugs.
Misdiagnosed Cancer
There’s never a good time to receive a cancer diagnosis but if you’re told by the cancer specialist that you’ve got stage 1 cancer and your prognosis for recovery is good, then it’s much better than being told you have no chance of survival as the cancer has spread and is untreatable.
If the latter happens simply because you didn’t notice any symptoms until it was too late, then you wouldn’t be able to make a claim of any sort. However, if a doctor or medical professional caused a delay in your treatment because they failed to diagnose or spot the cancer when they should’ve done, then you could claim compensation for any suffering caused by the delay.
We can help with cancer negligence claims, so please get in touch if you believe you, or a loved one, have suffered because of a cancer misdiagnosis.
GP And GP Practice Negligence
GP’s up and down the country see many patients every day of the week and very often they manage to diagnose the problem, prescribe a treatment or refer the patient to a specialist within a 10-minute appointment which is quite remarkable.
However, there are cases where the doctor fails to spot a problem or diagnoses it as something else which can cause their patient to suffer because they don’t receive the required treatment right away. This could mean the patient becomes more ill and their symptoms become worse. In these cases, a claim against their GP may be a possibility.
Data And Statistics For Negligence At Tunbridge Wells NHS Trusts
The table below highlights the number of claims made against he NHS trust in Royal Tunbridge Wells area and the amount of compensation they paid out in 2017.
Healthcare Provider | Claims in 2017/2018 | Number of Incidents 2017/2018 | Damages Payments |
---|---|---|---|
Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust | 60 | 12 | £8,159,285 |
To see the data in full, please refer to this NHS factsheet.
No Win No Fee Clinical Negligence Compensation Claims
You may be put off from beginning a compensation claim because you’re worried about the cost of hiring a personal injury solicitor, but you needn’t worry. Our panel of expert medical negligence solicitors offer a no win no fee service for all claims they take on.
Using a no win no fee solution means:
- You don’t have to pay your solicitor upfront to begin the claim.
- There’s nothing to pay if the solicitor fails to win you some compensation.
- If the solicitor does win the claim, you don’t need to find the funds to pay them as their success fee is deducted from the compensation (limited to 25%).
We believe no win no fee reduces your financial risk. If you would like to discuss the benefits of making a personal injury claim, please contact us using the information at the bottom of this guide.
Hospitals In The Tunbridge Wells Area
For your information, we’ve listed some of the main hospitals, both NHS and private, in the Tunbridge Wells area.
- Tunbridge Wells Hospital.
- Maidstone Hospital.
- The Coxheath Centre.
- Sevenoaks Hospital.
- KIMS Hospital.
- Uckfield Hospital.
As mentioned previously, though our panel of medical negligence solicitors are not based in the Royal Tunbridge Wells they can cover the area and may be able to help with claims at any of these hospitals. Please get in touch with us to discuss this further.
Contact Us
If you’re ready to begin a medical negligence claim and would like to discuss it with us today, then you can call our team on 0800 652 3087 or fill our simple online claims form to begin.
References
To help you further, now that you’ve finished reading our guide, here are some more guides and external resources which you may find useful.
Tunbridge Wells Hospital
Tonbridge Road,
Pembury Tunbridge Wells,
Kent, TN2 4QJ.
Inspection Report – The latest report from the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
Social Care Kent – Information from Kent County Council about care services in Tunbridge Wells and the Kent area.
Surgical Negligence Claims – Information on when you could begin a clinical negligence claim in Royal Tunbridge Wells following surgical negligence.
GP Negligence Claims – A guide about when and why you could sue a doctor or GP for negligence.
Birth Injury Claims – Read here about the different types of birth injuries that could potentially result in a claim for medical negligence.
Written by Brett.
Edited by Charlotte.