A patient makes a claim against an anaesthetist member following intra-operative accidental awareness, which she alleged resulted in psychiatric injury.

Baby T was eight weeks old when his mother brought him to his GP’s morning surgery. His mother had become increasingly concerned about his general irritability and frequent crying episodes, which lasted up to two hours. These had become apparent over the past three days, not settling with breast feeding.

Mr S was a 60-year-old lorry driver. He was overweight and smoked, and couldn’t walk far because he suffered with pain in his calves.

When Mrs C, a keen golfer in her early forties, began to experience constant pain in her lower back, she consulted a GP at her local surgery. Dr P took a history of slow onset of pain with restricted mobility. He did not examine her, but prescribed an NSAID and advised Mrs C to return in two weeks if there was no improvement.

An elderly patient dies after his prescription goes uncollected. Who is at fault – the GP or the patient’s care home? Medical Protection assisted a member at the resulting inquest.

Dr T’s deskilling in resuscitation leads to a patient death and a claim.

This psychiatric claim underlines the perils of treating those close to you.

Mr U has a hernia repair and is later diagnosed with lung cancer. He makes a claim against two surgeons involved, alleging it should have been identified sooner.

Consent and record-keeping are at the heart of this claim, which sees a patient left paraplegic following an epidural.

A doctor's failure to link raised ALT levels with a patient's use of nitrofurantoin led to a complaint being brought against them. Watch this short video to find out how the situation arose and advice Medical Protection gave.

Dr Marika Davies, medicolegal consultant, looks at the recent case of GA v Greater Glasgow Health Board [2019] CSOH 31, where the death of a 77-year-old patient raised questions over where the liability for the negligence lay: the junior doctor or the consultant?

A 48-year-old man underwent abdominoplasty and liposuction. At the pre-operative visit, the consultant anaesthetist proposed general anaesthesia along with a spinal anaesthetic for the purpose of post-operative pain relief.

Good medical records – whether electronic or handwritten – are essential for the continuity of care of your patients. Adequate medical records enable you or somebody else to reconstruct the essential parts of each patient contact without reference to memory. They should therefore be comprehensive enough to allow a colleague to carry on where you left off.

The regulations on NHS complaints in Wales are designed to make complaints handling open and accountable, fair and proportionate, and patient-focused. The emphasis is on resolving concerns in a timely fashion, openly and honestly, and a philosophy of “investigate once, investigate well”.