Birth Injury Claims: Dr Lorna Phelan, Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist
By Dr Lorna Phelan, Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist
Posted 23 October 2025
3 Minute Read
In this powerful session, Dr Lorna Phelan explores why we continue to “get it wrong” in maternity care - and how solicitors can better understand breach, causation, and systemic failings in birth injury litigation.
About the Speaker
Dr Lorna Phelan
Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Dr Phelan has over 30 years’ experience in high-risk obstetrics, intrapartum care, and maternity governance. She leads CTG training and interpretation at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and is nationally recognised for her expertise in root-cause analysis, human factors, and decision-making in obstetric emergencies. As a seasoned expert witness, she is trusted by solicitors on both claimant and defendant sides for her clear, contextual medico-legal insight.
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Webinar Highlights
In this session, Dr Phelan shared expert insight into the medico-legal challenges surrounding obstetric birth injury claims - from breach and causation to system-level failure and human factors in maternity care.
Key themes included:
- Assessing breach in delayed or incorrect CTG interpretation - and why CTG remains an unreliable yet vital tool.
- Understanding causation in hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE) and the critical role of timing and escalation.
- The “Four Cs” - choice, context, consent, and continuity - as root causes of many avoidable maternity claims.
- Human factors and systemic pressures, including staff shortages, decision-fatigue, and loss of contextual oversight in labour wards.
- Governance gaps and the need for true systems-level change rather than repetitive investigations.
Tags:
- Birth Injury
- Birth Injury Claims
- Birth Trauma Litigation
- Informed Consent
Expert Disciplines:
- Gynaecology
About The Author
Dr Lorna Phelan
Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist
Dr Lorna Phelan is a Consultant Obstetrician and Gynaecologist and Expert Witness with 9 years’ medico-legal reporting experience, having undertaken expert work since 2017. She has written over 1000 medico-legal reports, all for Claimants and Defendants, covering screening, breach of duty, causation, condition and prognosis in Clinical Negligence claims.
Her specialist expertise includes intrapartum care, high-risk obstetrics, CTG interpretation, maternity risk management and clinical governance, making her particularly suited to maternity negligence and birth injury instructions.
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