What’s in a name?

Ms Ciara Burke explains how accurate clinician identification can prevent ‘scattergun’ GP negligence claims

Contrary to the famous soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, names are incredibly important when it comes to GP medical negligence claims.

As a Medical Protection claims manager reviewing medical records and GP correspondence almost every day, there is usually more than one GP name at the top of headed notepaper that comes across my screen these days.

For the purposes of this article, I will refer to GP practices with more than one GP working there as multi-GP practices.

Patients of multi-GP practices, such as myself, will be accustomed to contacting their GP practice for an appointment and being given an appointment to see a GP who has availability. It is not always possible to see the same GP every time. Patients and GPs, both being human, will not always remember who they saw, for what ailment or complaint, on what date.

When a patient of a multi-GP practice is commencing a medical negligence claim, that’s when the importance of GP names really reveals itself. I have managed several claims where, for one reason or another, it is not clear from the copy of the patient’s GP records which GP the patient saw on any given date. This creates a cluster of issues.

The first issue is one that faces the patient and their solicitor. A personal injuries summons is issued for medical negligence claims in Ireland. It must have a defendant or defendants named. A patient’s solicitor will request a copy of their client’s GP records at the outset. If a patient’s solicitor cannot identify who saw their client on the date or dates of care that have given rise to the possible claim, then the solicitor and their client will have little choice but to name every GP in the practice as a defendant.

The expectation is that a patient’s solicitor will make enquiries with the GP practice to ascertain who saw the patient on a certain date or dates before issuing a summons. However, often the statute of limitations is running out, and a summons has to be issued with every GP in the practice named as a defendant so that the statute ‘clock’ is stopped on time. A summons that has been issued in circumstances like this is sometimes described as a ‘scattergun summons’.

Scattergun summons

While it is reasonable to expect that once a summons is issued in such circumstances it would be followed by a pause for enquiries to then be made about who actually needs to be served with the summons, that pause before service does not always happen. Based on real-life claims experience in Ireland, often the scattergun summons will be served on every GP defendant who was named. This creates the next issue which is that all of the GPs who have been served with the summons will have to contact their respective indemnifiers for assistance with it. The GPs will spend valuable time liaising with their indemnifier about a claim they really should not be involved in at all.

Based on real-life claims experience in Ireland, often the scattergun summons will be served on every GP defendant who was named

Once their indemnifier is assisting them with the claim, the indemnifier will take over and engagement will start with the patient’s solicitor and the co-defendants’ representatives/indemnifiers with a view to extricating the GP, or GPs, who have nothing to do with the treatment that gave rise to the claim. I have managed claims in which GPs who never saw a patient, as well as GPs who were not working in the GP practice at the time of the care that has given rise to the claim, have been named as a defendant and served with a summons.

Is there a way for GPs to reduce the chances of being named as a defendant in a scattergun summons? Yes, there is.

Socrates

As of November 2025, Socrates, the Irish patient management platform developed by the technology company Lanas, can now generate a comprehensive patient medico-legal report that includes all the information solicitors and your medical defence organisations require to identify the treating clinician/s and the full communications history, including SMS text messages.

This means defendants in a medical negligence claim should be readily identifiable to a patient’s solicitor. The new feature removes the need for practice staff to spend time manually tracing who was involved in a patient’s care if a claim summons lists all clinicians and reduces the risk of GPs being named as defendants in medical negligence claims where they were not involved in the care or events that have given rise to the claim at all.

The launch of the new clinician-identification feature was developed in response to direct feedback from GP members. This allows greater accountability and transparency to medical records and should help to reduce the number of GPs being named as defendants in claims unnecessarily.

We are delighted to see the feature rolled out to GP practices across Ireland and to have collaborated with the Socrates team on its development.