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Medical Negligence Solicitor Urges for Medical Reform

A prominent medical solicitor has urged for medical reform while speaking at a medical negligence conference in September.

The joint Managing partner at Callan Tansey Solicitors, Roger Murray, was speaking at a medical negligence conference when he announced some shocking statistics related the medical negligence failures in Ireland. Mr Murray, legal expert, announced that around 1,000 unnecessary deaths happen annually every year due to medical negligence.

As a solicitor who has been involved in many medical negligence compensation cases, Mr Murray said that though injured patients and families do have empathy for medical professionals who make mistakes “they cannot abide is systemic and repeated errors”.

Mr Murray called for thorough investigations into the practice of the healthcare professionals when mistakes do happen. He referred to many inquest situations where families learned that desktop reviews had been completed following a death. However, results were not sent to appropriate staff, leaving the family in limbo. He called this a “vital learning opportunity that had been missed”.

Mr Murray said 160,000 hospital visitors experience injuries due to human mistakes and errors. He said that believes that there is “no compo culture” to be witnessed when it comes to medical negligence compensation actions in Ireland. He went on to claim that what we are seeing in the legal system is just “the top of a very murky iceberg”.

During his speech, he went on to say that the most commonly experienced incidents relate to surgery (36 per cent) medicine (24 per cent), maternity (23 per cent) and gynaecology (7.5 per cent). He added that he feels that not all those injured in medical incidents report it. The HSE is notified of 34,170 “clinical incidents” annually and, of these 575 resulted in compensation claims against the HSE, a rate of less than 1.7 per cent.

Mr Tansey was speaking at the Pathways to Progress conference on medical negligence, which was attended by solicitors, medical professionals and patients. The conference was held in early September.

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