Panorama: How safe is your operation?
Nick Gray, Head of the Clinical Negligence Department at Williamsons shares his opinion.
When given the choice where to undergo surgery most people would think that their local private hospital is the best place for this. It might have more modern surroundings and equipment, but are the working practices safer than those at the closest NHS hospital? I would encourage patients to think twice when making such a decision. In my experience, the care that is provided when the named Consultant is not available often falls below the level one normally sees in the NHS. One of the reasons for this is that private hospitals often don’t have the resources to deal with unforeseen complications, and should this happen the patient is often transferred to their local NHS hospital.
In one particular legal claim I dealt with I can remember that the patient underwent a painkilling injection into her piriformis muscle to help relieve the symptoms of sciatica at the local Spire Hospital. Everything went well with the procedure itself, but there was a failure to effectively communicate with the nursing staff what immediate post-operative care she required. In particular, she was not closely observed whilst mobilising and this was necessary because there was a high risk of her suffering numbness/loss of sensation in the affected leg. After following nursing instructions to get dressed whilst unsupervised, she fell and fractured her hip. As a result she needed an unnecessary hip replacement operation. To make matters worse, a subsequent serious incident investigation implied that the fall had been her fault. With my help she was able to obtain a full admission of liability and the claim settled for £25,000.