Martyn Prowel Gartsides Solicitors have successfully obtained compensation for a client in his claim for damages for medical negligence against the Welsh Health Board
Background
In March 2020, our client’s mother Sophie, (names have been changed to protect the identities of our clients), attended at the A&E Department of her local hospital by ambulance with a suspected heart attack after suffering severe chest pains.
The description contained within the ambulance records were compatible with Acute Coronary Syndrome, and Sophie, therefore, should have received further investigations at the hospital to rule this in or out. Investigations should have been conducted via a trophic test, six hours after the onset of the chest pain. However, Sophie was discharged from hospital within an hour and was incorrectly treated with a muscular skeletal problem.
Several hours later, Sophie sadly passed away at her home, at just 36 years of age, after suffering a fatal cardiac arrest. Her son Ben, who was a teenager at the time, witnessed the events which has had a devastating lasting effect on him.
As a result, Ben instructed Martyn Prowel Gartsides Solicitors to represent him in pursuing a claim for damages against the Welsh Health Board for failing to provide his mother with the appropriate assessment and treatment when she presented at the hospital.
What We Did
To be successful in our claim, we needed to establish both:
Liability – That the hospital was negligent and therefore breached their duty of care to their patient, and
Causation – That the hospitals’ breach of duty caused the patient’s death.
We therefore identified and instructed appropriate medical experts to provide the necessary evidence to establish the same.
Following examination by a Cardiologist, it was confirmed that there had been negligence in this matter and that had Sophie been treated correctly, her survival rate would have been significantly higher.
As a result, the Defendants eventually admitted both liability and causation and our Client was awarded £160,000 in damages in settlement of the claim. It was admitted that further investigations should have been carried out, and that on the balance of probabilities, had Sophie developed the cardiac arrest whilst in hospital, Sophie would have survived.