Duty of Care in Accident And Emergency
A new ruling by the Supreme Court has found that A&E has a duty of care with regard to patients who have attended the unit regardless of whether their first point of contact is medically trained or not.
The case of Mr Darnley's visit to A&E made many headlines when he attended A&E with a head injury only to be told that he would not be seen for 4 to 5 hours, despite asserting that he felt close to collapse. Mr Darnley decided to leave the facility on the basis of this information, only to collapse later that day and suffer permanent brain damage as a result.
In fact, had he remained in hospital he would have been seen within 30 minutes, as was the hospital's policy for patients with head injuries. Had Mr Darnley been given this accurate information, he would not have left the A&E unit and would have received more prompt attention and likely have made a full recovery according to the judgement.
Mr Darnley's original claim and subsequent case at the Court of Appeal both failed, finding that there had been no negligence.
At the Supreme Court, however, those rulings have been overturned and the judge has found that:
- The hospital owed a duty of care to the patient regardless of whether the receptionist was medically trained or not, including not to provide misleading information which may foreseeably cause physical harm
- The information given to the patient was misleading and inaccurate in the light of the '30 minute' policy, leading him to make a foreseeable decision to leave
- The usual procedure (maximum 30 minutes wait time for head injury patients) was known to the receptionist on duty
- That Mr Darnley's actions were 'reasonably foreseeable' and had he been told that he had a wait time of 30 minutes, he would have stayed, thereby achieving a different outcome
The hospital was found to have been negligent in its care of Mr Darnley and to have contributed to the cause of his subsequent injuries.
Medical negligence
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