The aim of this article is to throw some light on legal proceedings relating to clinical negligence.

Clinical Negligence: Breach of a legal duty of care owed to the patient by doctors and other healthcare professionals and their employers and there by causing an injury/harm to the patient.

Clinical negligence is often called medical negligence, but they are different from each other. The compensation of medical negligence differs from clinical negligence.

In clinical negligence, compensation will be awarded only for general damages like the injury and pain caused by negligence. But in medical negligence, compensation will be awarded for special damages too, such as treatment fees and travel expense in addition with the clinical negligence compensation.

There are many types of Clinical negligence for which compensation can be claimed, such as, misdiagnosis, delayed diagnosis, delayed treatment, psychiatric care, dentistry, birth injuries, psychotherapy.

Important points considered to claim compensation in clinical negligence cases.

Make a complaint to the hospital or the healthcare provider involved. The complaint should be according to the procedures set by the NHS and most private health care providers.

Complaint will be an important record in building your claim. You have a right to have an explanation for what occurred. But for that you need to wait, as they will have to investigate your complaint and discuss it with the staff involved.

To have a successful claim you need to prove that the injury/harm or whatever happened to you was only after visiting the hospital and directly linked with the negligence of the doctor/medical staff. Stronger the evidence - successful will be the claim.

You need to have an investigation about the circumstances surrounding what happened to you. It may include having independent expert witnesses.

Independent expert witnesses will play very important role as they study the situation and explain to the court whether the accused breached the duty of care and the treatment given to you was not meeting the accepted standards generally used in the medical procedure.

Statute of limitations: Generally can be defined as "time limit to file a Case". The victim of clinical negligence should file a case within a stipulated time; otherwise he/she will not be eligible to sue forever in that particular case.

Though Statute of limitations differs from state to state but generally ranges between 1 to 6 years. In special cases, the court sometimes has discretion to allow cases to proceed beyond this time limit. Time does not run while a person is mentally incapable.

So depending upon the time and the legal knowledge you have, you should seek legal advice promptly. Before thinking of legal action, a letter of claim setting out the allegations of negligence and the damages suffered has to be sent to the potential defendants in accordance with the court procedure rules.

The next step is to seek expert advice from specialist clinical negligence solicitors before legal proceedings are commenced.

To find and finalize a solicitor, you can visit the Law Society website and go through a list of solicitors referred by the Clinical Negligence Panel of Law Society. Law centers, citizen’s advice bureau and voluntary organizations such as Action against Medical Accidents (AvMA) are also can be visited for the same purpose.

The information given in this article is not a substitute for legal advice, and not commit/question anything legal or technical. The one and only purpose of this article is to give a general idea to cope up with unfortunate accident happened and have a good settlement which can help the sufferer move on in the life.

Clinical Negligence - If a doctor/staff fails to provide proper treatment and meet the Accepted Standards in Medical Practice and causes harm to the patients both physically and emotionally, then it can be a Clinical Negligence. For more details visit http://www.medicalnegligencecare.co.uk