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Misdiagnosis is one of the types of personal injury incidents with which medical negligence solicitors become involved and there are a wide variety of reasons for this, including poor record-keeping.
In the early days of the NHS and up until the common use of computers since the 1990s, everyone's personal records at their GP's surgery were kept in individual brown envelopes, doctors hand-wrote notes of a patient's condition and other staff added details about tests, prescriptions and treatments.
With the increasing number of records, this was becoming an unwieldy system for many busy practices and they were grateful to make use of technology, converting the records to a data base, accessible to all staff without the hazards of trying to read someone's handwriting and, perhaps, making a mistake because of that.
This has eliminated one type of potential for a doctor's error and possibility for medical negligence but it opens up other fields for confusion and mistakes.
However, computers are only as accurate as the people who use them and inputting incorrect data can have a devastating effect on someone's medical treatment if, for example, two people with similar names are muddled, an incorrect figure is entered or previous medical records from another GP are not correctly added after a transfer from another surgery.
Then there is the transfer of information about a patient to a hospital or screening service which, in many ways, has been helped by computerisation because letters can fail to arrive or be mislaid in a busy clinic.
Most hospitals still use paper patient record files and this is gradually changing with more computerisation but there will still be scope for misdiagnosis and error because of the continuous flow of in-patients, each of whom is an individual needing particular treatment.
If someone is admitted as an emergency to a hospital where they have not been before, doctors will still have to use all their experience and diagnostic skills to try to provide the most appropriate treatment even without background records.
Doctors at all levels, as well as other medical staff, are responsible for accurate record-keeping and there have been many clinical negligence cases where records have been misplaced, have been incomplete or wrong, or mixed up with another patient.
YouClaim's medical negligence solicitors can help
Whether records have been input on a computer or handwritten, if a problem with them has been a factor in an instance of personal injury from which you have suffered, why not talk to one of YouClaim's solicitors to see how they can help.
With all their years of professional experience, our panel of lawyers, who work throughout the UK, can give you the best advice on the possibility of pursuing a claim for compensation against a doctor or other medical personnel.
There are a number of ways to contact YouClaim's legal team who will put you in touch with a medical negligence solicitor. Online you can use e-chat, there is an initial inquiry form on this webpage or you can telephone free on 0800 10 757 95
