Duty of care and breach in clinical negligence claims

Produced in partnership with Andrew Ritchie KC of 9 Gough Chambers

Practice notes

Duty of care and breach in clinical negligence claims

Produced in partnership with Andrew Ritchie KC of 9 Gough Chambers

Practice notes

The duty of care

A medical practitioner owes a duty of care to their patient. This duty is to take reasonable care to:

•
take a proper history
•
investigate the patient’s symptoms and complaints properly
•
make proper differential diagnoses
•
make any necessary referrals to specialists
•
initiate action in order to take all reasonable steps to procure the health of the patient
•
provide a reasonable course of treatment
•
follow up with the patient afterwards if that is reasonably necessary

For guidance on identifying the correct defendant in a clinical negligence claim, see Practice Note: Identifying the correct defendant in clinical negligence claims.

It is not only medical practitioners who may owe a duty of care to a patient.

Non-clinical staff

A health care provider may owe a direct duty to a patient. In Darnley v Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, the claimant attended the A&E department with a head injury and was informed by the receptionist that the waiting time was between

Andrew Ritchie, KC

9 Gough Chambers

Described as approachable, dependable, a classy team player, hard on the issues and hard working, Andrew has enormous experience in fatal accident claims, occupational health litigation, especially mesothelioma claims, employers liability litigation generally (for example Corr v IBC, the suicide case, HL) and road traffic and insurance law (for instance Rafiq v MIB, CA).

Andrew writes 9 chapters of the leading Personal Injury text Kemp & Kemp on Quantum including the fatal accidents chapter.

Many of Andrew's reported cases concern catastrophic injury claims involving brain damage, spinal injury and PTSD (he represented many victims of the Paddington rail disaster). Andrew's Clinical Negligence practice covers in particular Hypoxia at birth, Urology, Cardiology and neurosurgery.

Andrew also represents medical professionals before regulatory and disciplinary tribunals and also has considerable experience in professional negligence work arising from personal injury litigation.

Jurisdiction(s):

United Kingdom

Key definition:

Duty of care definition

What does Duty of care mean?

A duty of care refers to the circumstances and relationships giving rise to an obligation upon a defendant to take proper care to avoid causing some form of foreseeable harm to the claimant in all the circumstances of the case in question.

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