subject: What Do You Know About Medical Negligence Law? [print this page] Negligence refers to the situation when a person does not deliver his duty properly, or he breaches his duty, and this breach has led to harm to the involved party. Similarly, when we talk about medical negligence, it means that the doctor has neglected the patient or has not taken proper care of him or has not performed the required treatment that he was supposed to have, and due to this negligence, some harm has been caused to the patients, which may be death in extreme cases.
There are many laws devised in all countries of the world to handle the cases of medical negligence, in order to compensate the aggrieved party. In the UK, there are many medical negligence laws, which define medical negligence and the steps taken to handle them.
Nobody is perfect, and sometimes the most renowned specialist makes mistakes in detecting and diagnosing the nature of the disease. A doctor can only be held liable for any kind of clinical negligence if he is proved to be guilty of his misconduct. No doctor acquiring ordinary skills will be guilty if, acting with reasonable care.
Skill must be exercised by the doctors. A doctor cannot give assurance of the perfection of his skill or guarantee the cure. If a qualified doctor has adopted the accurate course of treatment, and has worked in the best possible manner suitable to the patient, he cannot be held responsible for negligence if the patient is not totally cured.
Before the liability is considered, there are certain areas that must be considered. The person blamed must have committed the act of omission or commission; his act must have been in the violation of his duty; and must have caused injury to the patient. All the allegations must be proved in the complaint against the doctor, including the citing of the evidence available and the exact opinion by the expertise of the same profession.
The judge dealing the case may extend the time limit. This may happen in few circumstances and the aggrieved party may have to file a request with the judge. If he allows, the limit can be extended. Apart from these circumstances, the time limit is always a barrier. Therefore, you must start the legal action as soon as possible.
However, you must know that these laws are made to compensate the aggrieved party, but in most of the cases, the doctor involved is not responsible. There are sometimes misunderstandings at the end of the patients. In some cases, the situation of the patient is critical and certain actions are necessary to save his life, although there might be fifty-fifty chances for the success of that action. In these cases, the patients as well as their families are informed about the true situation. So, you must clear these misunderstandings before taking any legal action.
Carrying a medical negligence case forward is a very lengthy, time consuming and complicated process. However if you do choose to go forward with filing a case against the offender, you would be doing good to the community at large by preventing more medical negligence cases.
