No-one expects to seek help and end up in a worse position – especially when it comes to our health. When medical negligence occurs, there should always be hope that wrongs will be righted and lessons learnt.

Yet, sometimes it’s harder to seek justice when something bad has happened. When you’ve experienced medical negligence, you should be able to get justice for what has happened no matter what circumstances are unfolding in the world around you.

The principle that we always have the right to a reasonable quality of treatment is one that every public body agrees with: councils, legal services, and medical trusts all have boards that are tasked with maintaining standards. These boards exist to support learning when mistakes happen and keep people safe; they are accountable to us all, all of the time.

This issue has been highlighted in a piece by the Guardian regarding the personal experiences of MP Barbara Keeley encountering delays in her breast cancer treatment during the pandemic. She has said that 'patients do not always have the confidence to challenge what they are told,' and that she is calling for greater efforts to be made to tackle growing waiting lists. You can find the article here. 

It has also come to light that the current pandemic has led to fewer people seeking medical attention than usual. Authorities remain concerned that Covid-19 is making people take greater risks with their health and doctors continue to call for people to seek medical attention if they need it. It’s vital that everyone understands that if you need help, you can still get it.

Meanwhile, healthcare professionals continue to strive for excellence and deliver this, 99.9% of the time. However, when mistakes do happen, it’s important that they are recognised and resolved fairly, for the benefit of everyone. Honesty, transparency and accountability can and should be expected of the individuals and institutions that are charged with our wellbeing.

People who have experienced medical negligence often have to face the fact that their lives have changed beyond recognition. Far from being inconsequential, the effects of medical mistakes are often profound, which is why accountability matters so much.

The resolution of a medical negligence claim might not give a person their full range of movement back or heal them of chronic pain, but it is designed to give them as much of their old life back as possible. It may mean that a person can make adjustments to their home to make it accessible or get therapy to ease their pain. It should always mean that a person gets a fair shot at justice when something beyond their control and all of our reasonable expectations has gone wrong.  That is what accountability means in real life.

The bottom line is that we all have every right to expect a good quality of treatment and reasonable healthcare outcomes, regardless of what else is happening in the world. In the absence of reasonable treatment or outcomes we deserve for identifiable wrongs to be righted.

Julia Hurlbut, Director & Head of Clinical Negligence at Jackson Lees

Julia has been supporting clients to get justice when they’ve experienced medical negligence. If you want to find out about some people’s journeys to justice, you can read more here.