Articles in ‘Birth Injury’ Category

The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB) is an independent body funded by the NHS to investigate circumstances where there has been an adverse event during pregnancy and/or childbirth. They routinely release reports, known as…

Funded by the NHS, The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HISB) is an independent body who investigate circumstances where a mother or her baby has suffered an adverse event during pregnancy and/or childbirth. HSIB have…

The Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch is an independent body who investigate circumstances where there has been an adverse event during childbirth and/or pregnancy. HSIB release reports routinely, known as Maternity National Learning reports. These…

A baby born in Gloucestershire has recently hit the headlines as he was almost twice the national average in birth weight, delivered naturally at 15lbs 7oz! The baby’s size went undiagnosed during pregnancy and caused significant problems with the delivery, as his shoulders became stuck; a life threatening situation called ‘shoulder dystocia’.

Kerstin Kubiak and Tracey Furminger acted on behalf of a young boy who suffered from cerebral palsy, due to meningitis he developed from untreated GBS infection contracted during the birth.

As specialists in the causes of brain injury, we understand how conditions like Cerebral Palsy can have a severe impact on a person’s quality of life. But we also know that despite this, when given the correct support, people with a whole range of brain injuries can go on to do amazing things and live successful and independent lives.

Adjusting to life after a birth injury is a difficult process for any family, and any birth injury is a permanent reminder of a potentially traumatic event. But if we are ever going to confront Erb’s Palsy, we need to change the way that we talk about it and some of the complications it can involve.

Erb’s Palsy is a birth injury with largely physical symptoms, but because the visible injury to the arm may demand focus, it could be hiding subtle injuries which are yet to become apparent. Here we look at the invisible injuries that can follow a diagnosis of Erb’s Palsy

Kerstin Kubiak represented a 24 year old female client in her claim for compensation for the severe brain injuries she suffered as a result of negligence around the time of her delivery. The allegations were that the hospital was negligent in its use of Prostin during her mother’s labour which caused excessive contractions and in turn caused our client to suffer lack of oxygen. There was then a delay in identifying that our client was in distress during labour as a result of the excessive contractions and therefore a delay in delivering her by emergency caesarean section. Had she been delivered about 20 minutes earlier than she was then she would have avoided all injury.

Kerstin Scheel, Partner specialising in birth injury claims at RWK Goodman, acted for a 20 year old man, J, who suffered from a shortage of oxygen at the time of his birth at Nuneaton Maternity Hospital.

The UK has no universal antenatal screening programme to check whether a pregnant woman is carrying Group B Streptococcus (GBS) infection. Instead, assessment of likely GBS carriage is risk-based only. The charity Group B Strep Support campaigns for the introduction of universal screening to try to reduce the incidence of neonatal infection with GBS, which can have severe consequences for the new born. New research supports this campaign.

A large settlement has been reached on behalf of a 21 year old man, who was injured in the neonatal period as a result of untreated GBS (Group B Streptococcus) infection. His mother was…