Causes and Effects of Medical Negligence in Scotland
Causes Of Medical Negligence – Medical negligence is medical malpractice that occurs when medical professionals (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) fail to follow the standards of medical care.
Medical negligence in Scotland can have devastating consequences for patients and their families.
In this blog post, we will discuss some of the various causes of medical negligence in scotland.
Causes of medical negligence in Scotland
Some of the causes of medical negligence.
There are many factors that can cause medical negligence to occur.
These include: poor communication, medical error due to a lack of training or skills, medical errors caused by repetitive tasks (causing the doctor or nurse to be unaware of potential issues), and more.
The Rules of Professional Conduct for Medical and Dental Practitioners also known as the Code of Medical Ethics highlights some scenarios that could lead to Professional Negligence. Some of these are:
A delay in attending to a patient in need of urgent medical attention
Show of incompetence in the Patients assessment.
Making a wrong diagnosis especially when the symptoms were so obvious that no reasonable skillful health practitioner could have failed to notice them.
Failure to reveal or offer advice to the patient about a medical procedure which may lead to serious side effects such as deformity or loss of an organ.
When a procedure or treatment is carried out without the patient’s full consent, when such a consent was necessary.
Making a mistake in treatment e.g. amputation of the wrong limb, inadvertent termination of a pregnancy, prescribing the wrong drug in error for a correctly diagnosed ailment, etc.
Failure to refer or transfer a patient in good time.
A doctor’s failure to act in the best interest of their patient.
Medical Negligence in Scotland has been known to be higher than south of the border; however this is not true across all specialties.
In general, doctors in private practice had a lower number of claims against them than those working at NHS hospitals.
It is important to note that medical negligence does not just happen in the medical profession – other professions such as construction, engineering and law have been known to make mistakes.
One of the main reasons for medical errors is because doctors are human – they will sometimes rush through things without double-checking or take shortcuts when it’s easier than following guidelines set out by medical bodies like NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence).
Medical professionals should work together with patients so these sorts of issues can be addressed before a serious mistake occurs; this includes working on trying to understand what a patient wants from their healthcare experience while also providing them with the information they need about risks associated with treatments.
This all comes down to communication between doctor and patient – as these would help improve the rate of Medical Negligence in Scotland.
It’s also important for medical errors to be reported so that NHS staff can see how they’re performing as a whole, which will help them identify where mistakes are being made more often than others.
The fact is that medical negligence does happen in Scotland (or anywhere else) – it just needs to be identified before it becomes too big of an issue.
