Medical Negligence - Is it worth pursuing?

[bojest]

I ask is it worth pursuing as after waiting for 18 months for an extremely slow 'no win, no fee' solicitor to get their act together and get a medical report from a 'specialist' sorted. The advice received is we wouldn't have above 50% chance of winning so advised to let it go. Now we only have until Oct this year left due to time limitation.

Firstly the report is not factual and many assumptions have wrongly been made.

The basics of what happened are as follows.

Oct 2014 my husband went into complete urine retention one evening. A call to 111 service at midnight got us a gp call back at 2am whereby he was advised to drink 2 litres of water and if no better contact either gp in morning or go to A & E. No attendance to him was offered only a phone consultation.

If he had been attended it would have been clear he had a lot of urine already 'stuck' and to put more pressure on his bladder by introducing a further 2 litres would cause further harm.

At 9.30am the following morning he went to A & E in excruciating pain and a bladder with 3.2 litres in it which was stretched so far it has been rendered useless ever since and he remains with a catheter in place.

Yes he had noticed as many older men do a decrease in urine output prior to this and yes his prostate is enlarged but up until that night had never given him cause for concern.

In his medical records for the visit to A & E it is stated he arrived with 3.2 litres of urine in his bladder but tge 'specialist urologist' who this solucitor got to review his notes says "whilst there is much mention of 3.2 litres in his bladder I would say it was more likely to have been around a litre after viewing A & E notes"....

Where he has arrived at this rubbish we know not. Unless he sprung a leak out of another orifice on the way to A & E.

We are both of the opinion the medical profession certainly stick together over negligence. This is a 65 year old man who now has had to give up his job because of this due to frequent infections caused by catheters and leaking embarrassing moments on train travelling to work everyday.

 

Even the out of hours 111 service admitted that in future they would send a gp out if a patient presented like this again. Also they conveniently lost recording of advice given to us the night we phoned for advice althougg they retained paper record...

I had a 5 year battle and won a 6 figure sum and without a solicitor in sight.

I contacted NHSLA directly and they were actually helpful.

The trick is to keep it simple. Get your own report done. Ignore talk of it costing 1,000's it shouldnt be more than 3 or 4 hundred. Get a list of approved experts from NHSLA and go directly to the expert yourself with your story and med records, submit the report to NHSLA and they are obliged to counter it by getting one done themselves. It's plain sailing after that and the 3 year rule shouldnt apply or count if NHSLA are aware of your claim.