Wakefield Man Receives £2,000 For Poor Hospital Treatment

Published: 29th May 2015

A Wakefield man has received £2,000 in compensation after Liddy’s Solicitors helped him to claim for the poor treatment he received at hospital after he had suffered a head injury while playing football.

Our client was taken into hospital after being injured in a tackle during the match, but was confused and making little sense when he arrived. He was placed in a ward by himself and even though a nurse reassured his wife he would be kept under close observation, he fell twice and suffered a further head injury.

His wife stayed with him throughout the next day and noticed that her husband was rarely looked in on by the nurses, despite the fact that he was clearly a danger to himself due to his disoriented state.

A neurological examination was not undertaken until later that day. It was clear that the hospital was understaffed and, as a result, the most basic of nursing care was not provided, but fortunately the patient’s wife was an ex-nurse and was able to stand in.

The patient was left with a minor brain injury, although the medical evidence showed it had been caused by the sporting accident and not the falls in hospital. However, the quality of care delivered by the hospital was appalling and no measures were taken to minimise the obvious risk that he could fall again.

Liddy’s Solicitors were approached by the family to help. After reading the medical notes, it was clear that the most basic of steps to safeguard the patient before his first fall had not been taken and that, even then, the ward was just too understaffed to allow the nurses to avoid him falling a second time.

Our clinical negligence team wrote a letter of claim, but although the hospital admitted fault for the first fall, it denied fault for the second. It was clear from the medical evidence that, thankfully, the only injuries caused by the falls in hospital were a gash to the top of his head and bruising to his face. After issuing Court proceedings, the case was settled for a sum of £2,000.

Liddy’s Solicitors have dealt with many hundreds of claims for clinical negligence and have lawyers who specialise in clinical negligence, accidents at work and road traffic accidents.  All of them have been qualified for between eight and 20 years.