Looking after yourself while a claim is investigated

A concern we hear constantly is whether getting the problem fixed will damage the claim. It will not, and delaying necessary treatment to preserve evidence is the wrong choice both clinically and legally. You have a duty to mitigate your loss, which means taking reasonable steps to limit the harm. What matters is that the condition is documented before it is corrected — photographs, radiographs and a written record from the treating clinician.

You are entitled to register elsewhere at any time, and making a claim cannot affect your right to NHS dental care. Tell the new practice what happened factually and ask them to record their findings. A new clinician's contemporaneous notes describing what they found are often among the more persuasive documents in a claim, precisely because they were not written for the purpose.

Memory fades over the eighteen months a claim can take, and general assertions about pain carry far less weight than a contemporaneous record. Note the date, what the symptom was, what you could not do because of it, and any expense. Keep receipts for everything, including travel to appointments and over-the-counter painkillers.

• Pain levels and what they prevented you doing that day
• Time taken off work, with dates
• Every appointment attended and what was said
• Receipts for remedial treatment, medication and travel
• Photographs at intervals, in consistent lighting

Records have to be obtained, an independent expert instructed and given time to report, a letter of claim served, and the defendant allowed four months to respond under the pre-action protocol. That sequence alone accounts for most of a year before any negotiation begins. Silence during those periods usually means the process is working normally rather than that something has gone wrong.