Highlighting the Importance of Patient Safety Issues in Healthcare
This year World Patient Safety Day is due to take place on 17th September. Its stated aim is to encourage 'global solidarity and concerted action by all countries and international partners to improve patient safety'. This year the specific focus is on children and babies, with the slogan 'Patient safety from the start!'
The campaign recognises that, not only are children often more vulnerable to failings in patient safety due to their reliance on others for care and for a voice, but also that significant healthcare failings can affect a child's entire life.
In the UK, the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, establishing a patient safety culture and aiming to improve patient safety continuously, provides a range of guidelines and tools for the monitoring of, assessment of and response to patient safety concerns. This includes listening to the views of patients and their families in relation to concerns.
Nonetheless, patient safety incidents continue to occur, sometimes permanently changing lives.
Providing safe healthcare through every health facility, via the thousands of dedicated individuals who work within the NHS, to the millions of patients who depend upon it, is an enormous, complex and hugely challenging process. Inevitably, occasionally, errors occur and, whatever actions are taken to try to ensure that the incident cannot happen again, a patient has suffered and may continue to suffer for the rest of their life.
The results of the patient safety incident may have rendered the individual disabled and reliant on care, unable to work, possibly unable to communicate.
In the worst cases, the individual may have died, leaving their family to try to cope with the consequences.
The right to compensation
If an individual suffers a poor outcome following negligent medical care, which would not have been the case with an appropriate level of care, they are legally entitled to claim compensation for the consequences.
A successful claim will address financial losses such as the loss of income caused by the patient's symptoms, both in the past and in the future, as well as any costs of care, equipment and treatment which have been necessitated by the impact of the negligent care.
Speak to a legal specialist
If you are considering pursuing a claim, it is essential to talk to a medical negligence legal specialist who will investigate the quality of your medical care and identify whether or not it would be appropriate to make a claim.
Glynns Solicitors is a dedicated medical negligence legal practice with a team of specialist solicitors and extensive experience in these complex claims.
Contact us today to talk to a solicitor, free of charge, if you suspect that you may be entitled to make a claim.
We can offer No Win No Fee medical negligence funding which we will discuss with you during your free initial telephone discussion.
Please call us free on 0800 234 3300 or complete our Online Enquiry Form.
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