GP Negligence

When you have a problem with your health the first port of call is usually your GP. Whilst GP’s play an important and invaluable role in our society, the high demand for this care may mean that mistakes can happen which could compromise a patients care leading to serious injury. As a result the number of claims made against GP’s continues to rise.

Pursuing a GP claim means that a claim is brought not against the practice but the individual GP involved in your care. It is important to know therefore exactly which GP you think may have been negligent and when they treated you. Most people believe that pursuing a successful civil claim for medical negligence against an individual GP will automatically result in that GP being struck off. That is not the case. The General Medical Council (GMC) is the UK regulator of all doctors and it is for them to remove the doctor from the register and remove their right to practice medicine. This is an entirely different forum to a civil action.

Common types of GP negligence are:

• Misdiagnosis
• Delay in diagnosis
• Not taking an adequate history of symptoms
• Failure to review medical records
• Failure to refer for specialist opinion
• Failure to visit patient at home
• Not acting on test results received which indicate further specialist care is needed