Sue the NHS?

[Bazzlad]

What a moral dilemma.

My friend's grandparent has been seriously ill over the last month, and looked after amazingly well by the NHS.

Somebody has made a mistake and now his life is in jeopardy again.

The family are now looking to sue the NHS.

Now my immediate view (which of course is from a distance is this) -
You're suing somebody who made a mistake whilst trying to save said family member.
By suing the NHS you're saying naughty, naughty don't do it again, whilst taking money away from them leaving them less funding and more likely to make mistakes.

So -
To sue, or not to sue?

[Brucelles]

It depends entirely on circumstances. If there was an "unavoidable" error, that's life (or not), and suing would be pointless. If it was a totally avoidable error and someone was negligent I would be tempted to sue. Some expert advice is required either way.

[pollaxe]

It's a hard call, as Brucelles says above it depends on the context really.

I had a chance to sue a particular institution recently for something not life-threatening but pretty bad but I chose not to because I'm not a fan of the current blame/compensation culture...

[kalniel]

Will sueing cause any additional remedial action to be taken to prevent this from happening to someone else?

[UltraMagnus]

by not suing you are letting this happen to someone else.

[Noxvayl]

**** happens although it may be hard to accept when it directly affects you... sueing just causes more problems and shall solve very few if any.

I totally apose this compensation bull****... I worked breifly for an engineering company and one of their workers got seriously injured from a silly mistake made by someone else. He had the option to sue but choose not to because the company firstly fired the fool that caused the mess and secondly took care of him so that he may get back to work quickly. The company said looked after its valued employee's which I admit is rare now.

Granted most companies around couldn't care less about there employee's its all about profit for them but when you continually sue them you fortify there belief and make things worse. The hunger for money this world has come to accept has started a perpetual cycle that leaves the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Think about it for one person to prosper greatly requires another to suffer...

[squishy]

by not suing you are letting this happen to someone else.

Just because you sue someone for making a mistake doesn't mean they can't make it again

Everyone's human, everyone makes mistakes. It's a shame it's had such consequences, but in my opinion sueing them won't help mend anything. Like someone already said, the NHS have no money already.

[fray_bentos]

Suing will have little benefit to the NHS but financial benefit to the claimant, to prevent such an event occurring again an investigation should be held and suitable action taken to anyone found negligent (retraining, dismissal or something in between).

Draining money from the system helps no-one, equally covering problems up helps no-one either.

[zulander]

I dont know the full details but i wouldent sue i dont think - hard to say untill your in that situation i guess. IF that happend to someone i know i think id be asking for an ionvestigation as to how it happend or something simelar

[Ravens Nest]

My father went in for a hernia operation and was given 4 different anesthetics.

They failed to check if he was allergic to any of them and this caused his heart to stop and he died for over 3 minutes but luckily was brought back.

He could have easily died that day but the same team of people took him from the jaws of death, he lived for another 13-14 years until his natural death late last year.

He wasnt the same after and acted differently as the years went on as he had suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen going to his brain.

The dilemma is he was effectively killed and then brought back by the same people.

I pretty much agree with bazzlad i just hope when people do sue that it makes them more careful with there next patients.

oh and my dad never got his hernia done either lol
may he rest in peace

[ikonia]

Depends if there are costs involved.

if you make the error and for example and someone is brain damaged and needs care assistnace, I can see the point of sueing, if you are sueing them because they made a mistake, the its pointless, its better to raise this to the medical board and try to get steps put in place to stop other people suffering the same problems.


Sueing the NHS for no financial requirments other than your own satisfaction moves funds from an already stretched budget and your greed can potentially assist in lowering other peoples standard of care.

[Moby-Dick]

Litigation culture is one of the less favorable US Imports into the country.

[Saracen]

.....


By suing the NHS you're saying naughty, naughty don't do it again, whilst taking money away from them leaving them less funding and more likely to make mistakes.

So -
To sue, or not to sue?

There's no easy answer and I can't say whether I'd sue in the particular instance because I don't know enough about it.

In the general case, and as I understand it, you can't sue over a mistake. To be able to sue, you'd have to prove negligence and, at a superficial level, that requires being able to prove three things :-

1) A duty of care exists
2) Breach of duty
3) Resulting damage.

In a hospital situation, I'd say the duty of care is obvious. Whether it was breached or not is entirely dependent on the circumstances of what happened. The moral justification for suing, even the NHS, comes from the "resulting damage".

Suppose, for instance, the patient's life is endangered, and they suffer a bit but they get appropriate treatment, and make a full recovery with no lasting effects. Now contrast that with someone who's life is endangered and, as a result, suffers irreparable brain damage and is not only unable to work, but requires long-term and perhaps extensive 24/7 care.

If that latter person was a young father, with a family, and was the family's main breadwinner, then not only have that family lost the health of a loved one, but the entire family's future has been seriously and adversely affected. They've lost the income of the breadwinner, and even if the partner was previously out at work, they'll probably now have to quit work in order to care 24/7 for the father. Why should the entire family be reduced to the breadline because of someone's incompetence? Why should they be condemned to a life on benefits? Are they not entitled to compensation for that? Under those circumstances, I'd sure as hell be willing to sue to get compensation if I had to.

In most cases in the UK (and personal injury is a possible exception) compensation claims are not about punishing the person that caused the damage. They're about compensating the person that suffered the loss as a direct result of someone else's negligence. That's why the damages are called compensatory damages, and generally do not include punitive damages, which are assessed on a very different basis. And why should victims not be entitled to be compensated? The fact that the compensation culture leads people to seek compensation for tripping in the street and breaking a fingernail is appalling, but it doesn't mean all compensation cases are "compensation culture". We have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

And so, in some cases, either that compensation is forthcoming on a voluntary basis, or if not, legal action is (IMHO, of course) fully and absolutely justified.

But this relates, of course, to negligence and incompetence. It has to reflect the fact that not even NHS staff are inhuman robots incapable of honest error, and it certainly doesn't include cases where there's a risk and it just doesn't work out. As a non-medical person, I'd say ANY operation caries a degree of risk. In most cases, it's pretty small and advances in, say, anaesthetics, mean it's a lot smaller now than it was even a decade or two ago, but nonetheless, there's a risk.

Providing everything was done properly and with due care, no justification for suing exists and you'd lose if you did. But if someone was negligent, the resulting impact on perfectly innocent people's lives can be drastic and in that case, compensation is fully justifiable both legally and morally. And if it takes a lawsuit to get it .... so be it.

Oh, and bear in mind that sometimes it'll be a condition of insurance that no admission of liability is made. Think about your car insurance. Even if a hospital accepts that errors were made and damage caused, it may well be that the only way their insurance will cover them is if the insurers are left to deal with it, and that may mean it goes through the courts, whether a hospital wants it to or not.

[iranu]

They have paid for the NHS through their taxes and are entitled to treatment that is free from negligence, therefore sue.

Imagine this; all your life you've paid tax into a system that would get you a brand new shiny car when you turn 60. You get the car and the brakes fail causing an accident, that's life threatening. It can be shown that the car was sold to you faulty. What would you do?

Say, oh well nevermind they need the money to better train technicians to install the brakes.

Why is the NHS seen as some saintly service that shouldn't be held to the same level of accountability that a private company would?

[ikonia]

no one said the NHS shouldn't be held accountable, the question was to sue or not.

[Lucio]

Personally, I wouldn't sue the NHS under almost any circumstances. It's possible, that if I suffered a crippling condition as a direct result of Trust policy (e.g. using outdated treatment methods that lead to further injury), I would consider suing, but chances are that'd only be to ensure I could recieve adaquate quality of life afterwards.

Yes, it's traumatic when things go wrong, but you have to ask yourself is what happened to your relative really just one of those things whereby someone makes a mistake or was it that they'd always do the bad thing if the same situation occured again?