Lidia Monteverdi providing Q & A on 2GB discussing Medical Negligence – 6 February 2021

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CS – Chris Smith / LM – Lidia Monteverdi –  C1,2,3, etc – Callers 

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Listen to the podcast

Read the transcript below:

LM     Good Morning Chris, how are you?

CS       I’m very, very well this Saturday morning. A listener has emailed through, it’s Jess, and Jess says “I experienced medical treatment that I think was negligent. How do I go about doing something about it?”

LM     That’s a really good question. The first thing is that you should make you’re OK, if you need to seek any further medical treatment then you should do so. The next thing you should do is seek legal advice about whether you would be able to bring a claim in medical negligence to let you know where you stand. This is because medical negligence claims are complex and not all medical treatment amounts to negligence, but you won’t know the answer until you seek legal advice.

CS       So would advice be that before you go and see the lawyer, start taking notes on what happened and what you hurt?

LM     Yes, that’s really helpful because quite often clinical records and doctors notes don’t contain the whole story so it’s really helpful to have your own notes about what happened.

CS       Temporaneous notes they call it. OK. What do you need to do to prove medical negligence?

LM     So there are four things that you need to prove in order to establish negligence. The first is that you have to show that a duty of care existing, and of course its very well established that doctors, hospitals, nurses and other medical practitioners owe a duty of care to their patients.  The next thing you have to show is that the practitioner breached their duty of care to you, which has caused you to suffer from some damage or harm.  Now, the way to do that is to get some expert medical evidence, to prove each of the elements of negligence, and again, you won’t be able get that medical evidence until you seek legal advice.

CS       And so would a law firm like yours at Turner Freeman supply independent assessors, medical experts that could look at the evidence?

LM     Yes, absolutely. So we have a number of experts from a variety of different backgrounds who we regularly approach to provide independent expert opinions in our matters.

CS       OK, so it’s not a burden on the person coming to you.

LM     No.

CS       Alright, and how long do I have, or in Jess’ case, how long does she have to make a medical negligence claim?

LM     So generally speaking, you have three years from the date you discover negligence has occurred within which to commence any court proceedings. Now the date of discovery is a little bit flexible, and so that date your limitation period starts to tick is not always the date of your surgery or treatment, although in many cases it is. So, if the limitation period has expired in your matter, then you may not be permitted to continue with your claim.

VOICEOVER

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