Leslie Ash got £5m compensation, not £500,000!

[mumemma]

Looks like the papers got it wrong yesterday.....

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7192605.stm

I'm not begruding her a payout but if the NHS has to compensate for every screw up like this you can sure as hell kiss it good-bye.

Lawsuits have made US healthcare ridiculously expensive.

They are having a big problem with having enough consultant obstetricians practicing over there because they fear the lawsuits. You can be the best medical practioner in the world but stuff can still go wrong and you can still get screwed even if what went wrong was out of your control. OB-GYN docs in the USA must pay out in excess of $200,000 a year in malpractice insurance to be allowed to practice. They just cannot afford it. In my home state women are having to drive hours and hours and hours to get ante-natal care because of the low number of doctors who want to practice that specialty.

I don't begrudge her for her "loss of earnings" but this is setting a bad precedent.

Anne...yes this whole lawsuit-society palaver is not a good step forward, I agree....
I really think that NHS is spending money so so stupidly wrong...surely it only takes common sense that teh NHS neds an overhaul, as in more quality staff in all areas would solve so many problems.
Patients would receive better treatment, care would be of higher standard and therefore less infections and thinks like bedsores, less things going unoticed until it's "to late" and has become a real problem....but hohum.....

it is great to knock lawsuits.....untill god forbid it happens you or yours. so tell it to the children damaged at birth due to human error. sorry you can't sue.

I think, it's more that, if staffing was better and training was better where necessary...then human error, whilst not completely avoidable, would at least decreased by a lot.

Also, of course there are a lot of very good reasons to sue, but it is getting more and more ridiculous...I mena, with everything now, iykwim...and I truely hope we will not follow into Americas footsteps in that...

My kid was damaged at birth due to a hospital error. I still say suing for millions and millions is fucktarded.

The midwife was overwhelmed with too many patients. I am a nurse and could myself in her shows and know that I could not have done better than she did. I also know things could have been much worse. If I sued the trust for damages they would pay for it by having even less staff around causing more errors and more payouts and less staff then more errors then even more payouts....

You recover your loss. It is very unfair but if say one of my children died that is no financial loss (in fact it's a saving) whereas i f I lost a husband who was bringing in a million a year I would lose that sum for the next 30 years. That's just how it works. But there has to be fault. Presumably some level of germs in hospital is normal and not at fault and a good few people get MRSA when they get home not in hospital - it's all around us.

AnneMayesR I am not saying sue foe millions and millions. but if your childs life has been ruined by a human error. and you will have to care for said child 24/7 for the rest of their life(and if not you someone else) then you have no choice. tbh i could say more but that would be a whole different thread(govement providing care) nice phrase fucktarded!!

Yeah I like the word fucktarded. For some reason I get a foul mouth when I come on line. I guess it's because I am always surrounded by kids and old people and have to say things like "oh beans" in real life.

LOL

lol Anne

2shoes...of course , especially if by human error, better care provision should be given...it should be given anyway...thing is, people sueing isn't going to help...it's going to help a few, those that sue, but then what...teh money does have to come from somewhere....

'OB-GYN docs in the USA must pay out in excess of $200,000 a year in malpractice insurance to be allowed to practice. They just cannot afford it. In my home state women are having to drive hours and hours and hours to get ante-natal care because of the low number of doctors who want to practice that specialty.

I don't begrudge her for her "loss of earnings" but this is setting a bad precedent. '

I couldn't agree more!

My mother's doc used to do OB, but as she's a solo practitioner she couldn't afford the malpractice insurance premiums so now she only offers GYN services.

I worked at a county hospital women's clinic were residents were finishing their training and only one was doing OB in addition to GYN - most were headed for just GYN.

They just didn't want to even go there.

but 3andnomore if you don't sue you do not get good provision. when your child reaches adult services it is totally different. sometimes the only way people can secure help and care for their child is to sue.

It is ok to say oh but the money has to come from somewhere but you could say that about anything. if you are in a car crash and it is not your fault you claim against the other driver........knock on affect is in the end insurace premiums go up for everyone.

Sorry, what I meant is, that it should be given (ggod care provision) withou the stress of sueing...
and above all, they should try to avoid incidences in the first place...but they are not if they are cutting more and more Jobs

the sad thing is it is one of those catch watsits(24 or something)

it shouldn't be...it is all about investing the money wrong, iykwim...I am sure if they would emply more staff therefore avoid a lot of problems that are sued for, they actually could supply good care to everyone...but maybe I am naive...

sadly a lot of the cases I have heard about have not been due to staff shortages or overworked midwives.

5m!

I'm sure she owes me some of that

I think a child who as a result of negligence has been left with life long special needs and care deserves huge compensation. And so do many adults. But I think Ash such a massive payout because of her public profile and her ability to pay excellent solicitors, not because she was more deserving than the hundreds of others out there who have suffered equally/more.

I hope she gives a large chunk of it to charity.

2shoes..unless you know exactly how many other patients a midwife has and exactly what is going on with them you do not know that. It becomes so easy to miss something so obvious when you are overwhelmed.

If something happens the trust sure is going to put it on the doctor/nurse's/midwifes plate as much as possible. They are staffing these hospitals dangerously and putting the staff in a situation where mistakes and omissions in care are unavoidable but will never admit it.

My sister's hair salon has 10 chairs and they have 6 members of staff on duty. The ward I work on has 39 acutely ill and dependent patients and never more than 2 nurses and 2 assistants. If anything happens the nurse is thrown to the sharks.

"The nurse was so stupid that she missed the fact the the victims oxygen mask was off and he suffocated. She didn't check him in over an hour. Incompetence and negligence"

No one will ever mention the fact that the nurse had 10 patients on the other side of the ward that were dying and so critical that she could not leave their side for a minute to go around and check everyone else...and the managers refused to pay for some help to be sent to her.

When you are rushed and tired and 10 hours without food and water and thinking about all the things that need to be done for your other patients whilst you are sorting out a crisis with one then it becomes very very very easy to screw up.

This is why I got out and why no one wants to do this anymore. Making a mistake that hurts a patient is the end of your life as well.

Plus your are under so much pressure from so many demanding people that it becomes easy to cave and try to please them rather than making good clinical decisions.

You illustrate very well AnneMayesR that successive governments have let the NHS down so atrociously that the situation is now critical. I really don't know where it goes from here.

Dr. Rant (The Blogging Doctor) explains it all very well here:

www.drrant.net/2008/01/sick-as-mrsa-negative-trout.html