How to deal with complicated birth injuries

Mums Tips

Pregnancy & Birth

Published on Saturday, 29 August 2020 09:07

Last Updated on 29 August 2020

Monica Costa

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If a medical error led to your child suffering an injury during birth, you will likely want to seek justice. Birth injuries can have a severe effect on both you and your baby’s life and wellbeing, and seeing professional mistakes go unaccounted for is devastating.

To bring justice in the form of compensation, seeking the help of medical negligence lawyers to start a claim is the best course of action.

The trauma of birth injuries

Birth injuries are varied and can be caused by a number of different faults. Many are linked, too; for instance, if your child is born with jaundice and it is not diagnosed by your doctor, leaving it untreated can lead to hearing impairments or cerebral palsy. If a traumatic and preventable circumstance such as this has affected you, taking the first steps to seeking justice is the correct, but daunting next move.

The best method with legal matters in the medical field is to go straight to a solicitor.

 

Contact a solicitor

Getting in contact with a birth injury solicitor will help set the wheels of justice in motion. You should explain to the solicitor what you believe the errors were and what result and effect they have had on you and your child. This will be both a cathartic and productive experience, and your solicitor will – based on what you have told them – apply for medical records to begin working on the case.

 

Apply for records and establish facts

Your solicitor will need to see the medical records from the relevant healthcare provider, be it the NHS or otherwise, in order to see how they will likely respond to your claim. These records can take two months to obtain, but they are essential to establishing the facts.

 

Once both you and your solicitor have read through these records, your solicitor will discuss with you your recollection of the birth in order to prepare a statement. During this process, medical professionals are consulted in order to obtain an objective opinion on whether negligence was apparent.

 

Notify the healthcare provider and send a claim letter

Before starting your claim, standard practice dictates a letter of notification is sent to your healthcare provider, explaining how and why you are about to claim against them. Following a conference including yourself, you solicitor and legal and medical experts, your letter of claim is submitted.

 

Within four months, the healthcare provider should have responded, though it often takes longer. The healthcare provider may deny any negligence or may admit full or partial liability. To avoid going to court, they could table a financial settlement if they believe negligence had occurred causing the birth injury.

 

Consider pre-trial settlements

This financial settlement should be considered carefully, and your solicitor will help advise you on its fairness. If you reject the settlement – or the defendant denies any wrongdoing and offers no settlement in the first place – your solicitor will issue court proceedings for you.

 

In between this and the court hearing taking place, further attempts will be made to agree on a pre-trial settlement. If none is reached, the issue will be settled in a trial by judge.