What now?

[wednesdays child]

Hi,

 

I'll keep this as brief as I can.

 

 

My wife is a type 1 diabetic and

 

 

during her pregnancy with our son started seeing "floaters" in her vision.

 

 

Her diabetic midwife booked her in for an appointment with the eye specialist at our local hospital but

 

 

in the meantime complications with her pregnancy meant she had to be admitted into another hospital 30 miles away for the remainder of her pregnancy.

 

 

She told them about her eyesight and appointments but

 

 

they told her to cancel the appointments and they would deal with it there.

 

 

She was sent down to retinopathy a short time into her stay but the machine wasn't working and she was returned to the ward.

 

 

Unfortunately another appointment was not made for her and

 

 

a few weeks later she was rushed down for an emergency C-Section and

after initial complications mother and baby were eventually ok.

 

 

A couple of months later my wife attended another retinopathy screening and

it was discovered that she had massive bleeding in her eye and

 

 

after a couple of operations to save her vision unfortunately her retina detached leaving her blind in one eye.

 

 

After the traumatic events surrounding our sons birth and subsequent partial loss of sight she became depressed.

 

 

We sought the advice of a solicitor who obtained her medical records and passed them on to a specialist

who wrote a report saying the second hospital was negligent as they didn't honour the eye retinopathy screening

which would have picked up the bleeding and treated with laser surgery before it got too bad.

 

 

This was put to the hospital who passed it to their litigation team

who have just reported back the level of care my wife received was "reasonable".

 

 

 

 

My question is this - Do we proceed?

 

 

Is this just the hospitals way of trying to scare us away?

 

 

My wife is despondent as she believes she deserves an apology for the failure to pick up on the issue earlier.

 

 

What do you think?

 

Thanks

[BankFodder]

I think that you are entirely reasonable in inferring that the hospital has gone into "defence mode".

 

I would start off by getting a second expert report and if that corroborates the first then I would proceed against them.

 

With something like this and against an opponent such as the National Health Service you will need professional help and someone experienced in dealing with these organisations which will spend huge amounts of money to defend their own negligence to smash you.

 

Because of the likely value of this, you will probably have very little difficulty in getting a firm of personal injury specialists who are used to dealing with the NHS to help you on a no win no fee basis – but be careful because you want to make sure that if you lose, then your costs incurred are covered by some insurance.

 

Why you are commissioning the expert report, you may as well begin a complaint to the NHS ombudsman although once you decide on the legal action you will have to withdraw this complaint because you will not be allowed to go to the ombudsman and go to court at the same time.

 

Once you got your expert reports you need to ask your solicitors about what they think is the likely value of the claim but I can imagine it would be several tens of thousands of pounds for blindness in one eye. You don't say how old she is what she does for a living but these are all factors which are capable of pumping up the compensation.

[BankFodder]

Incidentally, their level of negligence will be exacerbated by the fact that they already knew that she was a diabetic and so therefore there will be a greater responsibility on them to take care.

 

Make sure that you log everything very carefully. Make sure you get all information. Survey subject access request on anybody involved and acquire as much data as possible.

 

If there are any meetings then make sure they are properly minuted by you and that you come away with the notes. Even better, you should take in a small recorder and discreetly record anything that goes on.

 

If there are any phone calls you should make sure that they are fully recorded. This means that you should get a call recorder straightaway and record every conversation as a matter of routine.

[wednesdays child]

Thank you for the advice, we've spoken to our solicitor and that discussion along with the points you raised have given us fresh impetus to continue so thank you once again, i'm pleased we stumbled upon this site, incredibly helpful.