Hospital Negligence
What Is Hospital Negligence?
Hospitals can be viable for the negligence of their employees including doctors, nurses and technicians. Medical mistakes occur not only in hospitals, but in day surgery, General Practitioners’ surgeries, retail pharmacies, nursing homes and home care. If you or a member of your family is the victim of hospital negligence, you will be entitled to compensation providing you can prove that your claim is justified.
Hospital negligence occurs for a variety of reasons, including:
- Inadequate training
- Failure to keep up to date with modern techniques
- Illegible handwriting
- Misreading of medical charts or drug information sheets
Health professionals have a duty of care towards their patients, but medical negligence is a complex area legally. The outcome of a case will often depend on whether the action taken or not taken by the professional was reasonable in the circumstances. It is essential that a qualified and experienced legal team be used for hospital negligence cases.
There are a number of things that must be proved to show that a hospital acted negligently. Adequate information indicating the hospital acted in a negligent manner must be shown. There is also a statue of limitations on hospital negligence cases. They must be filed within a certain time limit from when the negligent action occurred.
If someone came into a hospital for a surgical procedure and during the procedure a surgeon cut something incorrectly or left a piece of equipment inside the person, then this would be grounds for hospital negligence. In this situation, the surgeon may have simply made a mistake, but ultimately it was an unavoidable mistake.
If you would like more information on the matter at hand, or if you have been a victim of hospital negligence, feel free to contact Adele van der Walt Incorporated for more information and legal advice.
For more information on this subject, please give us a call at 012 460 3668 (SA) or e-mail us at clare@avdw.co.za
