October 23rd, 2009 by

Suffering from ill health can be a bit of a pain. Especially during these busy times where people refuse to visit the doctors or hospitals.

Despite this, the number of patients at public clinics has soared, thus resulting in an increase in the number of medical negligence claims made.

This is because more people are losing their health insurance cover as a result of being made redundant. The number of hospital patients are increasing while the number of professional hospital staff are remaining the same. This together with a rise in the number of junior doctors and medics being left unsupervised as a bid to deal with the soaring number of patients.

Hospital staff are left suffering from stress causing a rise in medical negligence.

In one recent case, an elderly woman who called a clinic help line on a number of occasions filed a compensation claim for medical negligence following the death of her husband.

The woman’s husband had been suffering from dizziness and other personal injuries including severe vomiting. The woman called the help-line who prescribed paracetamol. However, this did not work so the woman then called again hours later and was told to take him to hospital. The woman stated that she was unable to carry the man herself as she was under 5ft while he was over 6ft.

She then called an ambulance service who stated that there was no vehicles available.

Nearly 24 hours later the mans condition continued to deteriorate and the woman once again called the ambulance who came after 3 hours.

The paramedics came to the house to have a look at the man who was told that he was suffering from vertigo and that he should rest.

He was told to take paracetamol.

The next day the man died. It was later revealed that he suffered a stroke.

The failure to diagnose the man on a number of attempts left the woman to file a medical negligence claim against both the hospital and the help-line.