Home / Dental Negligence / Prominent Solicitor Condemns Medical Negligence Rate in Ireland

Prominent Solicitor Condemns Medical Negligence Rate in Ireland

A prominent solicitor has condemned the medical negligence rate in Ireland while speaking at a conference on the matter in September this year.

In September, Roger Murray, joint Managing partner at Callan Tansey solicitors, stated that he estimates that 1,000 unnecessary deaths happen annually every year in Ireland due to medical negligence. Mr Murray made these claims while speaking at a medical negligence conference, Pathways to Progress, attended by solicitors, medical workers and patients.

In his speech, Mr Murray stated that the four categories in which medical negligence incidents commonly occur are surgery (36 per cent), medicine (24 per cent), maternity (23 per cent), and gynaecology (7.5 per cent).

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

The solicitor issued a plea for thorough investigations when mistakes do happen. He referred to many inquest situations where families learned that desktop reviews had been completed following a death, and the results were not disseminated to appropriate staff. He cited incidents such as this as vital improvement opportunities that had been missed.

Mr Murray said upward of 160,000 people attending hospitals in Ireland experience injuries due to human mistakes made my medical staff at the facilities. In his speech, he stated that he believes that there is “no compo culture” when it comes to medical negligence compensation actions in this country, saying that what we are seeing in the legal system is just “the top of a very murky iceberg”.

He went on to say that all those injured in medical incidents report it to the HSE. There are notifications of 34,170 “clinical incidents” annually and, of these, 575 resulted in compensation claims against the HSE, a rate lower than 1.7 per cent.

About dentalnegligenceie

Check Also

Wrongful Death Compensation Increased by €250k for Woman whose Father’s Death ‘has blighted her life’

At the High Court Justice Bernard Barton increased a wrongful death compensation award by €250,000 …