A surgical error claim can be made when you have undergone surgery that has gone wrong in a way that results in pain, suffering or loss. In this situation it is necessary to establish that a surgeon has failed in their duty of care.

Duty of care

All medical staff who treat you have a duty of care. This is set out in various formal requirements for nurses, doctors, surgeons and other medical personnel. However these are mostly guidelines, not a set of closely defined rules. So interpretation is often needed to establish whether any failure of duty of care has happened. For example you may experience pain after surgery due to a negligent mistake by the surgeon, but it may be a natural consequence of the surgery. This would need to be established by expert opinion.

Examples of surgical error

• Unnecessary surgery
• Mistakes causing suffering, requiring further surgery
• Unreasonable delay in your surgery