One Warwickshire man recently won his medical negligence claim after hospital staff misdiagnosed his broken neck as a whiplash injury in the wake of crashing his car into a tree.
Manchester native Gary Rickard had been driving to Atherstone from Hinckley on the A5 when a burst tyre caused him to lose control of his car and collide with a tree, according to accident claims specialists familiar with the case.
The forty three year old man was rendered unconscious in the collision, necessitating emergency services to cut him from his wrecked car and then take him by air ambulance to Coventry’s University Hospital. Hospital staff then gave Mr Rickard a battery of precautionary scans before informing him he had managed to escape any severe injury before sending him on his way.
Mr Rickard informed personal injury claims specialists writing for the Coventry Telegraph newspaper that he was in severe pain and discomfort for the length of three weeks following the incident before finally gaining re-admission to the hospital for an intensive physiotherapy course. At this point, staff re-examined his CT scans and found the man’s neck fracture, even though he had been receiving treatment for whiplash previous to the discovery.
Since then, Mr Rickard had no choice but to endure three surgical procedures to repair the damage to his neck, he still has restrictions to his movement three years after the last operation, resulting in an inability to return to his HGV lorry driver job. Since then, the man has been awarded compensation for his pain and suffering from the hospital, but expressed disappointment due to the fact that the hospital has yet to apologise for their error.