Medical Negligence

[Elaney11]

Hi Everyone
Just wondering if anyone know what I can do. I've being attending an ENT consultant since I was 7 years old, was with a hospital until 2009, they were bringing me up & down for 2 years solid every 6 months just to syringe the ears, always found it extremely painful.
Anyways, I asked the team to discharge my notes as I felt it was unnecessary to do the travelling I was doing just to get my ears syringed that I could get this done with my GP. They asked another consultant in a different hospital to take my files on.
Basically it turned out that I had an extremely bad ear infection that was spread to the mastoid region & middle ear cavity.
In 2013, I enquired with a solicitor about getting my files through F.O.I and to see if there would be a case for medical negligence, sent my files away to the UK for an expert report, this report came back as no negligence and I was treated with care, so left well enough alone.
Fast forward a few years later, the infection that I had had progressed to the ossicular chain basically causing severe erosion of the bones, which has now left me deaf in 1 ear.
I was told that the damage was now permanent & irreversible in November 2024.
Again, I enquired with a different solicitor, was told the same again, files would need to be sent to the UK, at a huge cost, report came back as if earlier intervention had taken place, that basically I wouldn't be where I would be now. Solicitor was happy with the report and proceeded with the case until she received Barristers reports that he was not happy to sign off on proceedings due to the report not being "strong" enough and my fight against the statue of limitations, he is saying i knew between 2004-2009 when I was with my original consultant. There is no possible way on this earth I could have known.
I had suspicions in 2013 when I enquired with the first solicitor but when it came back through the expert report, I said maybe it's just my bad luck.
Now no solicitor will look at my case, as they all say im statued barred

Had anyone ever being in a similar situation or has any one any advice as to what I can do.
This is not what I'd come out on a financial basis, this is about accountability, even if they wrote me a letter to acknowledge what they done, and apologised I would be more than happy.
Thanks so much 💓

To be clear, I am not a lawyer although I do have some experience of medical negligence claiming. You are way out of time, and effectively you are willing to spend a lot of money on lawyers for a letter of apology that you will never get. Whatever the truth of all this, it is too far in the past to action, and continuing in this vein will cost you even more, both financially and emotionally, to achieve something that is impossible.

Even though, I realistically only knew that this was down to negligence, my main reasons in 2013 was for exploratory more than anything, but when the report came back as no negligence, I said oh, maybe it is just my hard luck with my ears. It was only in November 2024 when my new consultant said that the stapes was now fractured that nothing more could be done. I was actually with my nurse in July 2024 and I asked her if this was detected in time would I be sitting here right now having this conversation with you and obviously she couldn't answer yes or no, but she smiled at me and nodded her head with the no gesture. The fact that I was misled by a ENT consultant in the UK and a solicitor in 2013 by stating no negligence should have something to play with these statue of limitations.

You are absolutely not going to want to hear this. A nurse nodding is thousands of miles off proving that your previous consultants did anything wrong. Nurses are wonderful (mostly) but they are not medically qualified consultants with years of experience in nothing else. There is absolutely no evidence that your deafness was caused by negligence, and you have no grounds to lift the statute bar. You cannot even prove when the ear infection occured or that it had any connection to the earlier treatment.

I understand that you really want someone to blame, but sometimes stuff just "is". You can rant and rail against fate, but all that will do is make you more unhappy. You need to move on.

Sorry but in all fronts you are unlikely to get anywhere with this as explained above.

also people can get recurrent ear infections and never have had their ears syringed so you have to be able to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that the ear infections came almost immediately after the syringing and have reported pain in your notes also. Even at that a GO should have been contacted when you had the infection and given antibiotics. How you can have an infection so bad it erodes the bones and you not have had clues like dulled hearing, pain, vertigo is hard to understand.

gutted this happened to you. Have you looked into whether you would be a candidate for reconstructive surgery? They can put in a prosthetic ossicular chain and ear drum now

It’s 3 years from the harm or from the date that the claimant became aware of the harm. The OP became aware in November 24.

So you were having regular ENT care which you self discharged from, at that point you checked for negligence and there was none, you went on to develop further ENT related problems whilst not receiving ENT care (at your own request) and you’re wondering if you can claim negligence? I don’t follow

You can call anything negligence does not mean it is

OP was clearly aware of the harm long before this, as she'd unsuccessfully attempted to bring a claim over it more than a decade prior.

In 2024 she was told that her existing condition had deteriorated to the point of being untreatable. That doesn't retroactively make the original care she received in the 00s negligent, or directly responsible for her current condition.

There's a lot of missing information here. But while it may be correct to say that OPs current situation could only have been avoided had it been caught sooner, that alone doesn't meet the extremely high bar for establishing medical negligence.

The key tests are whether a duty of care was breached and if it was, did that breach directly harm OP. In basic terms, if presented with the same information in the same circumstances, would it be reasonable for a qualified professional to reach the same conclusion? If the answer is yes (even if that conclusion ends up being incorrect), then it's unlikely that negligence has taken place.

@HoppityBun it is actually 2 years unfortunately. No solicitor will look at said case even though I have a clear Expert Report from the UK highlighting the negligence. They keep saying I am statued barred, that i should have known back in 09 but there is no possible way I could have known.

I have a clear Expert Report from the UK highlighting the negligence.

Does the report actually state that they were negligent in your care?

They keep saying I am statued barred, that i should have known back in 09 but there is no possible way I could have known.

You say that the treatment they performed on you was painful/unhelpful to the point that you discharged yourself from their care in 09, at which point another practitioner diagnosed you with an infection. It's tough to argue that you didn't know anything was wrong at that stage.

You've looked into the possibility of medical negligence twice. The first time you were told it wasn't, this time you've been told it might have been. If it did end up in court, they'd have an expert testifying that they made a reasonable decision at the time, and that any number of things could have contributed to your current condition in the years since.

This is the issue, and the reason there's a barring period - It's virtually impossible to prove that a condition diagnosed in 2024 is the direct result of negligence nearly 20 years ago. You have to prove that it is, all they have to do is introduce doubt.

I feel incredibly frustrated for you, but as the solicitors keep telling you, there's nothing that can be done.

Was this in UK? It is confusing because you mention sending notes to UK lawyers. FOI does not apply to personal records, it would be a DSAR. How old were you in 2009? Childhood records are kept until 25 and you have longer than 3 years to bring a claim if you were under 18. However it is not clear where or when you believe the negligence occurred and you would have to find hcps willing to say they would have acted differently on the basis of the information available at the time and that would have given a different outcome.

You haven’t actually stated what the negligence was. Who was negligent and how?

So far you’ve said you had ear problems as a youngster and the ENT saw you twice yearly, you self discharged from their care, then later saw a different ENT who said you had an infection - did they treat this? Was it appropriate treatment according to guidelines at the time? - then you went on to develop deafness, you asked a nurse if it could’ve been avoided and she “nodded her head with a no gesture” and you feel that’s proof of negligence? Did she tell you how it could’ve been avoided?

My assumption is that she believes the original ENT was negligent in not diagnosing the infection, but there's clearly a lot of info missing here.