By Megan Crowley. Last Updated 12th January 2023. In this guide, we’ll look at how medication errors by nurses can affect you and how they could happen in a healthcare setting. This guide also sets out the duty of care you’re owed in a medical environment and how this can be breached. Additionally, we’ll investigate the timeframe that applies to starting a medical negligence claim.
Medication errors by nurses claim guide
When providing treatment, nurses owe their patients a duty of care. This means that a medical professional, such as a nurse, provides you with a level of care that prevents you from coming to unnecessary harm.
We’ll explore some examples of compensation amounts for illnesses that could be caused by a medication error or other form of wrong treatment. Furthermore, this guide will explain the different kinds of damages that could be included in a settlement for medical negligence.
To get in touch, you can:
- Contact us through our online claims form
- Call us on the phone number at the top of this page
- Speak to one of our advisors through our live chat at the bottom of this page now
Choose A Section
- What Are Medication Errors by Nurses?
- Medication Errors – Can I Claim?
- How Much Could I Receive From a Medical Negligence Claim?
- Suing A Hospital For Negligence – Can I Sue A Nurse For Negligence?
- Top Tips When Claiming For Medical Errors in Healthcare
- No Win No Fee Solicitors – What are the Benefits?
- Learn More About Claiming For Medication Errors by Nurses
What Are Medication Errors by Nurses?
In any healthcare setting, nurses providing treatment or prescribing or dispensing your medication owe you a duty of care. As with other healthcare professionals, their responsibility is to administer a standard of care that meets a minimum requirement.
Medication errors are mistakes relating to the prescribing, dispensing or administering of medication. Examples can include:
- Being prescribed a dose of medication that is too low to treat you effectively
- Receiving medication that you are allergic to
- Being administered medication through the wrong channel; for example, you’re given a drug that should be taken orally through an IV (this is an example of a never event, which means it’s always an example of a breach of duty of care)
- Being prescribed a drug that you don’t need because you’ve undergone a misdiagnosis. This could also receive in you getting unnecessary treatment.
If you’d like to know more about claiming after you’ve experienced medical negligence, speak with one of our advisors today. They can offer you free legal advice on when medication errors by nurses might form the basis of a valid claim.
Medication Errors – Can I Claim?
Proving a breach of dutyis essential in making a successful medical negligence claim. If medication errors by nurses occur despite the right standard of care being provided, you’d be unable to make a claim.
Some examples of how medical negligence could lead to medication errors include:
- A nurse mixes your name up with the name of another patient because of a lack of concentration. As a result of the hospital medication error that this causes, you receive medication intended for someone else.
- A nurse fails to check your medical records while treating you. Because of this, they prescribe you a drug that you’re allergic to. This prescription error results in a severe reaction.
- Your nurse mixes up the name of the drug they are prescribing you with another drug and, as a result, tells you to take it with food instead of on an empty stomach. This impacts the effectiveness of the medication.
Speak to one of our medical negligence advisors about claiming if you were provided with a substandard level of care, resulting in harm. If you have a valid case, you could be connected with a No Win No Fee solicitor from our panel.
How Often Do Medication Errors by Nurses Occur?
A study that was published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) looks at the different forms of medication errors in the NHS over a year. The study estimates that there were 237 million medication errors in the NHS in England in this timeframe. It also estimated that:
- 72% of the total incidents have either little to no potential for harm
- 38.4% of overall incidents occurred in a primary care setting
How Much Could I Receive From a Medical Negligence Claim?
As you work through the medical negligence claims process, you might be curious about how settlements are arrived at. Your settlement could be made up of two different kinds of damages; general damages cover the pain and suffering that you experience because of how your health has been impacted.
Using the Judicial College Guidelines, legal professionals can assign a value to the general damages head of your case. We have used some of these in the table below to illustrate how much a claim could be worth.
| Injury | Description | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Kidney | Where both kidneys are damaged or lost. | £169,400 to £210,400 |
| Kidney | Where the risk is present that the natural function of the kidney will be lost or there is a risk of developing a future UTI. | Up to £63,980 |
| Kidney | Where one kidney is lost and the other remains undamaged. | £30,770 to £44,880 |
| Bowels | A complete loss of the bowels natural function with other medical complications. | Up to £184,200 |
| Bowels | The person may depend on a colostomy due to the total loss of the bowels natural function. | Up to £150,110 |
| Bladder | Double incontinence with a complete loss of the bowel and urinary function with other medical complications. | Up to £184,200 |
| Bladder | Where function and control in the bladder are totally lost. | Up to £140,660 |
| Illness/Damage Resulting from Non-traumatic Injury (i) | Toxicosis is severe and causes acute pain, fever and vomiting among other conditions. Hospital admission would last for a few weeks. | £38,430 to £52,500 |
| Spleen | Where the spleen is totally lost, causing an ongoing risk of internal infections. | £20,800 to £26,290 |
| Spleen | There is a minimal risk of the person developing a internal infection or disorder despite damage to the spleen. | £4,350 to £8,640 |
These figures are from the 16th version of the guidelines published in 2022. However, they should only be treated as a guide, as your circumstances will impact the amount of compensation you’re awarded.
If you need any further information about how much your claim could be worth, contact us today. Our team can offer free legal advice about claiming for harm resulting from medication errors by nurses.
What Other Compensation Could You Claim After Medication Errors?
Special damages cover any financial impact that your injuries have had on you. For example, it could reimburse you for:
- Carer costs
- Home modifications or adaptations
- Loss of earnings
- Medication expenses
Contact one of our medical negligence claims advisors for more information on what special damages could cover. If you have a valid case, you could be connected with a lawyer from our panel.
Suing A Hospital For Negligence – Can I Sue A Nurse For Negligence?
When you are in a hospital, all medical professionals owe you a duty of care, regardless of whether they work in the public or private healthcare sector. As part of their duty of care, they must ensure that they provide the correct standard of care.
Nurses in hospitals have a variety of responsibilities, from dispensing medication to patients, ensuring IVs are properly inserted, and taking blood for any essential blood tests. However, if a nurse breaches this duty of care, this could cause you to suffer unnecessary harm. For example, you are in the hospital and require an IV drip, but the nurse fails to sterilise the needle before inserting it, and, as a result, you suffer an infection. In this instance, you may be able to sue the hospital for negligence.
Contact one of our advisors today if you have any questions about suing a hospital for negligence.
Top Tips When Claiming For Medical Errors in Healthcare
If you have suffered due to a medication error by a nurse or other healthcare provider, and this has caused you harm, you should seek medical attention. You may wish to seek medical attention at another healthcare facility than the one where the error occurred.
You could also do the following in order to support your claim for a medication error in healthcare:
- Keep a diary of your medications, symptoms and names of those medical practitioners that treated you.
- Collect contact details of any witnesses to the incident or witnesses of the after-effects of the treatment.
If you have suffered a medical error, you may want to seek out legal advice. Our team of advisors can put you in touch with one of the solicitors from our panel with experience working with medical negligence cases.
No Win No Fee Solicitors – What are the Benefits?
If you are looking to begin your claim and are concerned about the cost of legal representation, we can help. We have solicitors that can represent you under a Conditional Fee Agreement (CFA), which is a kind of No Win No Fee agreement. If you decide to use a No Win No Fee solicitor, there would usually be no charge for upfront fees.
If your claim is successful, you’d have to pay a success fee to your solicitor. This is worked out as a legally-capped percentage of your settlement, and the legal cap prevents you from being overcharged. If your claim is unsuccessful, you generally wouldn’t have to pay for the work your lawyer has done.
For more information on when medication errors by nurses could form the basis of a claim, speak with an advisor today.
Want a Free Consultation? Contact Us Today
For free legal advice, talk to one of our medical negligence team. If you want to proceed with your claim and it seems you could have a valid case, you could be passed over to a member of our panel of medical negligence solicitors.
To get in touch, you can:
- Contact us through our online claims form
- Call us on the phone number at the top of this page
- Speak to one of our advisors through our live chat
Learn More About Claiming For Medication Errors by Nurses
Below, we’ve included some more of our guides that you might find useful:
- Birth Injury Claims
- How To Report Medication Errors
- Medication Errors – How Do I Report Them?
- Can I Claim For Hospital Medication Errors?
You might also benefit from these additional resources:
- NHS- Symptoms of poisoning
- Nursing and Midwifery Council – Professional standards of practice
- The Medicines Act 1968
We hope this guide on claiming after medication errors by nurses has been useful.
Writer Lizzie Winstone
Publisher Fern Smith
