Medical Negligence

This is a very complex area of law. It is a very traumatic and sometimes life changing experience and as such it is important that appropriate legal advice be sought from the outset.

​

There are currently some 4000 adverse incidents occurring in Irish hospitals each month. These include both major and minor incidents.

​

Eleanor Kelly & Company are committed to working with you and advising you if your medical treatment has gone wrong.

​

In order to establish a case in medical negligence against either a medical practitioner, or a hospital involved in diagnosis or treatment, it must firstly be proven that no reasonably competent medical practitioner of equal status and skill faced with the same set of circumstances would have acted in the same manner. Therefore if a body of medical opinion can show that it would have acted in the same way as the practitioner/hospital responsible for the treatment, then there is no case to be made in medical negligence unless one can prove that such practice was inherently defective.

​

Secondly "causation" has to be proven. It has to be established that on the balance of probabilities that the treatment which is alleged to have been negligent or substandard, materially contributed to the Plaintiff's injury. The Plaintiff has to be in position to establish that but for the error on the part of the doctor/hospital the injury would have been avoided.

Medical Negligence in A & E Departments
Whatever your view about the health care system in Ireland, there are unfortunately many things that can and do go wrong in practice;

​

The most common reasons for negligence in A & E Departments are as follows; -

• Failure to treat and diagnose fractures.

• Failure to order scans and/or x-rays.

• Failure to scan the correct body part.

• Incorrect reading and misinterpretation of scans and x-rays.

• Failure to diagnose and treat a fracture in time.

• Inappropriate and sub-standard treatment of fractures.

• Failure to be appropriately treated when seen to.

• ​

Claims for medical negligence are generally brought against the hospital concerned and not against the doctor or nurse involved.