Bolam v Friern Hospital Management Committee [1957] 1 WLR 582 – Page 2 – Law Journals

Patient Autonomy: Doctors’ duties in obtaining consent

Paul Sankey highlights the ongoing implications of Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board ‘Patient autonomy has largely displaced paternalism. This is a significant shift in the law to reflect changes in contemporary culture.’ A very significant change in the law took place in March 2015 which has serious implications for doctors discussing options for treatment with …

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Treatment: Life after Montgomery

Sophie Beesley highlights the development of the ‘reasonable patient’ in recent cases concerning patient consent ‘Patients should not be bombarded with information, but helped to understand what matters or is likely to matter to them as individuals, beyond the pure percentages of risk. Dialogue is key.’ Consent to medical treatment is only valid if it …

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Case Report: Montgomery (Appellant) v Lanarkshire Health Board (Respondent) [2015] UKSC 11

Patients’ rights; doctors’ duties; consent test ‘Patients should no longer be viewed as uninformed, incapable of understanding medical matters, or wholly dependent upon a flow of information from doctors.’The appellant, Nadine Montgomery, sought damages on behalf of her catastrophically injured son, Sam, born on 1 October 1999 at Bellshill Maternity Hospital, Lanarkshire, alleging negligent care …

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Child Abuse: Local authority liability

Richard Scorer considers failure to protect claims ‘It will be difficult if not impossible for local authorities to rely on the limitation defences they have deployed in “historic” failure to remove claims.’ Over the last three years, since the revelations about Jimmy Savile, child abuse scandals have dominated the media. Many more victims have come …

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Clinical Negligence: Reducing the patient’s life by four months

Ruwena Khan assesses the outcome of Cutting v Islam ‘The evidence of the defendant’s colorectal surgery expert was preferred by Patterson J who found that any prolongation of life would have been unlikely to have been of significant order and would have been no more than four months’ A general practitioner who had not fully …

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Debt Collection: We don’t need no education

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Ron Cheriyan considers a sensitive area of enforcement ‘In the unlikely event that liability is proved, the defendants will need to establish their loss. Defences should outline how the loss is calculated and figures cannot be plucked out of the air.’ Schools within the independent sector have witnessed a surge in the number of claims …

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Clinical Negligence: What does a clinician have to tell the patient?

Julian Matthews looks at the case law and some recent illustrations ‘The touchstone for liability in clinical negligence claims remains the Bolam test, and Chester and Birch do not warrant a wholly different approach in cases concerning advice.’ The standard of care the law requires of a doctor has become well established using the terms …

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Case Report: Webley v St George’s Hospital NHS Trust and anr [2014] EWHC 299

Section 2 Mental Health Act 1983; duty of care; burden of proof ‘The case was determined based on the simple finding that the Trust, by its security personnel, failed to take reasonable steps to ensure the safety of the claimant; and that this failure caused him to suffer injury.’ The claimant sustained his head injuries …

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Evaluating Claims: Successive causes of injury: the causation conundrum

Julian Matthews assesses the difficult legal issues that arise when multiple causes give rise to a compound injury ‘In clinical negligence cases, the complexity of the factual matrix means that the fine line between recovery and no recovery is regularly tested.’ Most clinical negligence litigation arises out of adverse outcomes secondary to medical intervention required …

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