Sir, – Your editorial (September 29th) highlights the need to legislate for a duty of candour in medicine. Information should be volunteered to patients who are harmed by an adverse event regardless of whether such information is sought and regardless of whether a complaint is made.
If it typically takes a defendant in a medical negligence action that has the power, money and resources at its fingertips two years or more to commission expert reports before it can admit liability, then how is a plaintiff expected to consult a solicitor, obtain all of the relevant medical records, submit them to an independent expert for the purpose of investigating a potential cause of action and, if one is identified, draft the particulars of claim and issue proceedings – all within a restrictive two-year statutory limitation period? Nobody could call that fair.
Evidently there is a misunderstanding about the difference between giving patients an explanation following an adverse event in healthcare versus the litigation process. The explanation should be immediate even if the litigation process cannot be.
Trying to shift the blame for years of delay onto victims of medical negligence is wrong. It should not be the responsibility of patients to bring a legal action in order to find out what happened to them. – Yours, etc,
DOIREANN
O’MAHONY, BL
Dublin 7.