The most common reasons for gynaecological and obstetrical negligence/hospital claims relates to brain damage known as neurological impairment (about 30%), stillbirth (14%), delay in diagnosis or failure to diagnose (11%).
Gerard Malouf and Partners compensation and medical lawyers are experts at obstetric malpractice cases. We assist victims of medical malpractice and medical mistakes to obtain justice and maximum compensation having run thousands of medical negligence cases involving hospitals, nurses, medical specialists, general practitioners and other medical contractors.
Obstetricians and gynaecologists are likely to be involved in a medical malpractice negligence case because specialist birth doctors cannot be in two places at once and are often over-worked.Â
Problems arise because of delays with the specialist gynaecologist/obstetrician attending a critical situation as it develops due to other priorities.Â
Cases often occur because hospital staff supervising birthing are excessively due to working strenuous hours with too many cases to manage.
There are a high proportion of medical negligence cases arising in the early hours after midnight. Often a call is made for an urgent Caesarean and if one were to investigate the facts the Caesarean could have been avoided had appropriate prenatal records been monitored during the course of the pregnancy. It is possible, under these circumstances, that a child is born with some form of neurological damage due to hypoxia also known as lack of oxygen due to these mistakes.
Hospitals and doctors knowing that there is a critical gynaecological problem is likely to develop are often faced with a malpractice claim on the basis that they did not adequately prepare for the emergency by having anesthetists, critical care people, and cardiologists available to undertake the appropriate investigations.
Preparation and training must be undertaken regularly by medical staff simulating potential and likely problems that will occur from time to time, but this doesn’t always happen.Â
The Achilles heel of many hospitals and medical specialists relate to the notification of problems once a critical situation develops. A chain of command should be set up in advance to deal with these situations as quickly as possible but once again this does not always occur leading to huge complications and ramifications for both the pregnant mother and newborn child.
Examples, where problems have occurred, include the child being caught in the birthing canal, consequentially suffering brain injury due to lack of oxygen or where Forceps are required to be used but should have been utilised much earlier or in a more delicate manner to avoid shoulder distosis.
Following an incident at a hospital, an RCA (root cause analysis) must be undertaken and can be discovered by obtaining copies of the medical notes at that institution where the unfortunate outcome occurred.
Of course, not all unfortunate birthing outcomes are attributable to negligence from the doctor, specialist obstetrician or nursing staff but a careful review of the root cause analysis report will generally give some clear indication as to why an incident occurred and whether it could have been reasonably avoided.
