£7000 settlement obtained for negligence in prenatal care

Posted 24/06/2015

Sharon Allison, a medical injury specialist at Ashtons Legal, has obtained a £7,000 compensation settlement for Ms T who is currently suffering from anxiety and depression following the traumatic death of her baby. Ms T found out at the time of her 20 week scan that her baby was very unwell and went into hospital to deliver her child less than a fortnight later. What the hospital failed to explain was how her baby was likely to look at the time of the birth and that it might be born alive and live for a short while after delivery. Not having these facts, Ms T opted not to see the baby when it was born. She didn’t find out until the day after the birth that the only visible abnormality was the size of the baby’s head and that her child had in fact lived for over two hours after being born. This sequence of events has had a negative impact on Ms T’s health; had she been properly counselled before the delivery, she would have opted to see her child and her grieving process might have been entirely different.

Sharon Allison comments: “Effective communication has a vital part to play in good medical care. All too often we hear of people whose direct medical care has been carried out entirely properly but whose decision making and recovery have been badly affected by a lack of communication around treatment and the way they may be affected by it. Sadly, this is a classic example.”