Medical negligence claims do have a positive impact on the NHS and its standards, but only because they raise the profile of areas of concern within individual NHS Trusts. This then results in the Trusts instigating internal investigations into their own failings. These investigations very often result in “lessons learned” – members of staff undergo retraining, teams think about different approaches to problems, protocols are re-writtten and tighter systems put in place. Whilst this all helps to raise the standard of care in the NHS it does not alter the fact that standards should be high in the first place and it should not take a medical accident to happen for a Trust to become aware that they have a problem.
Unfortunately medical accidents are far too common an occurrence. At TSP our focus is always on improving the life of our client rather than improving the NHS although this is hopefully a side-benefit to the claims that we pursue on our clients’ behalf.