Making Medical Claims: Should I Take Legal Action?

If you are advised that you that you have grounds for a legal claim, you should think carefully about whether you should take legal action.  It is not a decision you should take lightly. You should take the following things into account:

• Making a legal claim is stressful. You will have to go over what has happened to you many times, and this can be traumatic and upsetting.
• Taking legal action can have an effect on your ongoing treatment. It can be difficult to maintain a relationship with doctors and other health professionals if they know you are taking legal action.
• You need to think about whether you can afford to pay for legal action yourself, or whether you can get financial assistance from a third party (for example, "Legal Aid"). For more details about funding legal action for a clinical negligence claim, see our guidance.

The decision about whether to take the clinicians who treated you to Court has to be based on what you are hoping to achieve.
If your goal is to receive a basic explanation of what happened to you, an apology, or simply to bring what happened to you to people's attention, you may find that the NHS complaints procedure provides a more effective way of achieving this.
On the other hand - at least as far as the current system is concerned - litigation is the only way in which you can:

• Pursue matters beyond the formal complaints procedure;
• Obtain from the outset a truly independent assessment of the care you received; and
• Obtain significant amounts of compensation.

If, as a result of your injuries, you have had to give up work and/or seek expensive care, the question of compensation may be a significant one to you. The Community Legal Service advises that, "If you have been injured during medical treatment and your main priority is to get compensation, you are unlikely to get that through the NHS complaints procedure or the Health Service Ombudsman". In such circumstances, you may have no option but to take legal action.