Two hospital doctors receive claims after a delayed cancer diagnosis, which Medical Protection eventually takes to trial.

Child J, a one-week-old baby girl, was noticed to have a clicking right hip when she was seen by the community midwife. A referral to the orthopaedic clinic was requested and Child J was reviewed by orthopaedic junior doctor, Dr M, three weeks later. Dr M confirmed that there was no relevant family history and examined Child J.

Forty-four-year-old Ms M presented to her GP with pain and swelling of her right knee. She had experienced similar symptoms three years earlier whilst pregnant but had not undergone any investigations at the time

Complaints in health and social care: standards and guidelines for resolution and learning (2009) aims to provide a simple, consistent approach for staff who handle complaints, and for patients who raise complaints across all health and social care services.

Mrs A, a 50-year-old bus driver, presented to A&E with a short history of headache, vomiting and fever. Her family had noticed a recent change in her behaviour and she had been having difficulty coping at work over the previous few days. On examination, she was irritable and mildly pyrexial. The SpR in A&E described “blurred discs” on fundoscopy but otherwise routine clinical examination was normal. Her serum CRP was elevated and there was a slight leukocytosis on the FBC. Other blood tests, a chest x-ray and an ECG were normal.

A 67-year-old housewife, Ms T, was admitted to an A&E department having collapsed at home and been unconscious for five minutes. Ms T had fainted eight weeks previously and been admitted to a different hospital. She had also fainted six weeks previously. There was no evidence Ms T had experienced a fit.