Inexperienced Doctors in NHS

Junior doctors have to learn. However, how do we feel about them practising on us? Recent figures from the NHS shows the high level of mistakes that are made by junior doctors during their first four months in a new role. Health insurance has many advantages but for the consumer surely one of them must be that private hospitals do not take on trainees who, although very well meaning, are inexperienced.

Every August junior doctors rotate to a new position as part of their medical training. In the first week of this rotation there is an increase in the hospital death rate - by 6%. The stats show that figures continue to be poor for the first four months of the rotation before they go back to normal.

In one example they reported that 28% of junior doctors in anaesthetics were more likely to cause 'undesirable effects' like nerve damage.

According to another study by the Imperial Centre for Patients Safety and Service Quality at Imperial College London found that misdiagnosis may be a very significant problem in the NHS. The statistics show that as many as one in six patients may receive a misdisdiagnosis. Researchers said that one of the reasons for this was a reluctance of doctors to ask for help from senior staff.

Sandra Patton, a specialist clinical negligence solicitor at Kester Cunningham John, said:

'We are regularly approached by patients who have been misdiagnosed.

'Sometimes, such errors can have devastating consequences for our clients and I have, for example, dealt with numerous cases involving misdiagnosis of cancer that otherwise could have been treated and cured.

'There are many reasons why these errors happen and it is very disturbing that we are still seeing the same errors we were seeing 20 years ago.

'Lessons need to be learned every time there is a preventable error and action taken to stop it happening again.'

Private medicine in the UK does not employee junior doctors therefore the problems that their lack of experience creates is not an issue when you take out medical health insurance. Of course, even though it is hard to contemplate in the health sector, human error is inevitable within all professions. However private health facilities usually have very high standards of recruitment which helps to eliminate some of the problems.