Nicholas Dobson considers the debate on the extension of the duty of care to patients’ relatives
- Doctors have no duty of care to close relatives of their patients to protect the relatives from risk of illness by witnessing the death or serious illness of those patients from a medical condition which the doctor had negligently failed to diagnose and treat.
- Covers Paul and another v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust.
To witness the death or serious injury of someone close and loved must be a deeply harrowing experience. As the late Queen Elizabeth observed to families bereaved by the September 11 terror attacks in 2001: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love.’ But if medically negligent treatment given by doctors results in psychological or other injury to the patient’s relatives, do doctors have a duty of care to those relatives?
This was the thorny question faced by a panel of seven justices in the Supreme Court in May 2023 and on 11 January 2024, when judgment was given in Paul and another v Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust; Polmear and another
