Everyone has a right to health – not just here in the UK, where the NHS provides world-class healthcare free at the point of use, but globally.
It is enshrined as a fundamental human right, and rightly so in a world where the vast majority of conditions are preventable with existing resources. The fact of this, however, remains far from the lived truth of many, even here in a first-world country.
You may even find yourself subject to sub-standard care.
This can happen in a variety of ways, from failures in primary care to mistakes made in surgery, or even abuse suffered at the hands of an individual practitioner.
What are your rights as a patient in the UK, and what can you do in the event that something goes wrong with your treatment?
1. Understanding Your Rights as a Patient
Irrespective of the fundamental rights we enjoy as humans, there are prodigious specific rights we enjoy as UK patients – and expectations we can understandably hold with respect to the quality and standard of our care.
Some of these rights are set out in the NHS Constitution, which describes, amongst others, your right to choose a GP, your right to treatment by qualified staff, and your rights to primacy over drug-related decision-making. Further, you have civil rights as a patient beyond the NHS Constitution, granted via English tort law. These civil rights grant your medical team duty of care over you as a patient.
2. What to Do When Things Go Wrong
So, what happens if something goes wrong? You might be misdiagnosed by a GP, preventing you from accessing proper care until you seek a second opinion.
You might be misprescribed a drug to which you have a negative reaction, or which does not treat your condition.
You might suffer an injury in surgery due to a negligent surgeon, or suffer avoidable injury in the care of nurses before or after.
Such events are highly unlikely but nonetheless take place – and can have extreme consequences, from loss of quality of life to shortened life spans.
Even the most banal instances of medical treatment falling short can be taken seriously, by you as a patient and by the NHS.
The NHS receives complaints about care directly, and such complaints can lead to local changes if followed up. Where you suffered considerably as a result of your treatment, there is also the legal route.
3. Seeking Legal Help and Compensation
Medical negligence is a breach in duty of care, albeit one which needs to be exhaustively proven.
Where the impacts of medical negligence on you as a patient led to changes in your life, whether new disability, loss of wages or career or even a terminal diagnosis, there may be civil recourse for compensation.
The key step here would be to take as much documentation as possible to a solicitor specialising in medical negligence, who would evaluate your case and help to nail down a number for financial compensation, that covers loss of earnings, emotional distress and costs associated with your new needs.
Your solicitor would take over from this point, and potentially win you a settlement directly through NHS Resolution.
