Had an accident yesterday - what can i expect?

Can I just add, that Chris is right -

kayakerchris wrote:

What do you expect the GP to do? He is not a trauma surgeon and he will tell you that if it hurts rest it and come back if it does not settle.

Don't waste his time and yours.

as opposed to this,

markhewitt1978 wrote:

It's not a waste of time, that's what GPs are for. In any case you can leave it up to the doctor. In my case I rang up the surgery and a nurse talked to me over the phone. She made a note of my injuries and said that if they didn't get any worse I had no need to go in person. The important part was that I'd made contact and it was on record.

It is a waste of time and here is why -

Go to a Doctor if you need treatment. If you don't need treatment, and as an adult you should be able to decide this, then don't waste their time.

When you rang the nurse, where did she record your inuries..? how did she record them..? what did she say about them..? did she give a medical opinion of them..?

Whatever that nurse wrote down is worthless. So by writing it down you have wasted her time. Quite simply for her to give any evidence of that conversation is 'hearsay'. She can only repeat evidence that you can give and is not a witness to anything. The best person, infact unless you die, the only person that can give all the evidence of your injuries in a court is you. You'd as been as well phoning your mum as phoning the nurse.

Doctors can give evidence of seeing your injuries, they cannot give evidence of how you got those injuries, and very, very rarely will they commit to an opinion as to what caused those injuries. For that reason a Doctor will almost never be called to give evidence at a court if the injured person is there. I know this to be true.

I spend my whole life at Court and giving evidence. I know what I can and cannot say and I know what evidence can and cannot be accepted. If you ever watch court proceeding you'll notice the Cops gets his notebook out and gives 'his' evidence. That's notes he will have made at the time, of what he has seen, of what he has done and what others have said. In court, notes made at the time - or as soon as practicable after an incident is regarded as best evidence.

Now, taking best evidence to be that of an injured person. The best evidence they can give is their own. Notes of what happened, a sketch of what happened and photographs of any injuries taken by them will be accepted in court. If they 'phone a nurse who may or may not have written stuff down', that would not be accepted due to hearsay and the rules of evidence.

All this, 'make sure you get a written record' is just b*llocks and a waste of health professionals time.

I'm kinda hoping someone here is a solicitor specialising in criminal cases, or even better a Crown prosecutor so they can confirm they above. Failing that, just read the following from a similar thread which I think sums things up nicely -

Mikey23 wrote:

It astonishes me how whenever anyone does an 'I've been involved in an accident' post, everyone becomes a barrack room lawyer and we end up with another pool of collective ignorance...