Medical Negligence - Adviceline Injury Lawyers 

Medical Negligence – The Law

Duty of Care

The doctor/patient relationship is well established as one where a duty of care is owed. Other than doctors, there are a number of heath care professionals and providers who owe patients a duty of care. These include:

• hospitals
• nurses
• physiotherapists
• chiropractors
• dentists

Negligence

In order to prove negligence, a patient needs to show that the care provided to him/her was below the standard that would reasonably be expected by a medical practitioner. It is important to remember that just because a patient is not happy with the result of his/her treatment or he/she was not warned about every possible risk related to his/her treatment it doesn't automatically mean the patient will succeed in a medical negligence claim.

The law places great weight on what is considered a reasonable standard of care by the medical profession. Recent changes to legislation provide that a doctor will be able to defend a case if the doctor can establish that a significant number of respected doctors would have practised medicine in a similar way, with a similar level of care.

Causation

The patient must also prove that he/she suffered an injury that was caused by the alleged negligent treatment.

Causation does not require that the negligence is the only cause of injury but a patient does need to show that the medical practitioner materially contributed to his/her injury.

While this may sound like a simple task, it is often the most difficult part of the case. For example, in cases where there is late diagnosis of cancer due to the negligent treatment of the medical practitioner, it can be difficult to unravel which role the delay in diagnosis had on the patient's original condition and what effect it has had on the patient's prognosis.