Man awarded £30,000 after hospital fails to diagnose broken finger
A postman has been awarded £30,000 compensation after doctors failed to recognise that he had fractured his finger, despite having evidence from an X-ray.
The problem began when the postman fell on black ice and extended his left hand to break his fall. The left hand ring finger was painful afterwards so he attended his local A&E department run by Bassetlaw NHS Foundation Trust.
An X-ray was taken and he was advised that he hadn’t fractured a bone.
Over the next four weeks the finger showed no sign of improvement so he went to see his GP who advised strapping it to the other fingers and allowing it to rest.
The pain continued, so four months after the fall, the GP arranged a second X-ray. This revealed that there was a fracture and that this fracture had been present at the time of the original X-ray.
The man underwent further treatment but it was too late to repair the damage and the finger had to be amputated down to the middle knuckle.
He took legal action on the basis that the hospital had been negligent in failing to diagnose his condition.
A professor of hand surgery gave evidence that if the fracture had been diagnosed at the time of the first X-ray, the finger could have been saved with hardly any loss of function.
The postman was awarded £30,000 compensation in an out-of-court settlement.
David Kerry, Senior Partner and Head of the Medical Negligence Department said: “People often associate medical negligence cases with operations that go wrong but as this case illustrates, failure to diagnose injuries and illnesses can also cause huge problems. When failures do occur, the victims are entitled to be properly compensated for their pain and suffering.”
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