About Us
CURIOUS BY NATURE. INDEPENDENT BY PROFESSION.
I approach clinical negligence cases with curiosity.
Something has happened, sometimes with serious consequences, and the task of the expert witness is to consider why. That means looking beyond the outcome and examining the sequence of events, the clinical decisions, the contemporaneous records and the standards of practice that applied at that time.
I enjoy the investigative process. Small details can matter. Timings can be important. Different records may tell different stories. The medical literature may support or refute the actions of those involved.
My role is not to construct the strongest argument to support the party instructing me. It is to consider the evidence from both sides and then reach an independent opinion.
I enable the legal team to see the evidence and to link this to contemporaneous records and the clinical literature.
The role of the expert witness is not to provide a review of the clinical issues, but to bring my knowledge and experience to build a chronology of events and then
test those events against clinical guidelines and established clinical practice. As an expert witness I am not simply acting for the instructing side, but I will test various competing explanations, and then consider on balance which explanation carries the strongest weight.
The conclusions may not be supportive of the instructing party, but it is important in the world of clinical negligence not to be partisan.
The Story
I was creative as a child. I enjoyed writing, making things and understanding how things work.
Medicine gave that curiosity a purpose. I came to see clinical practice as a series of problems to be understood and solved. A patient rarely arrives with a neat biography of events. My role is to listen to the patient story and to construct a contemporaneous narrative around the documents, the story and the literature.
In medical negligence, everyone has a story to tell. However, there may be several competing versions of that story, linked to competing interests. The expert can provide a third narrative of events. This is not simply an account of either party, instead it provides a coherent, logical and balanced reconstruction based on the available evidence.
My interest in writing is now turning outside of medicolegal work. I am writing short stories about organisations, hierarchies, and longer stories delving into humanity and why we make good and bad decisions. These stories are built upon my personal observations of behaviour and motivations.
Themes
Medical Negligence Reporting
Investigation of clinical events, providing independent evidence based opinion
Clear Lines
Writer of short stories exploring health care, organisations, decision making, behaviour and motivations.
Education
Using multimedia formats to make the complex easier to understand.
Clinical Innovation
Developing new clinical services and finding practical ways to turn ideas, evidence and unmet need into better care.
Author
I take my observations of the world around me, and develop a semi fictional world that explores unintended consequences and the choices people make.