Pauline McRoy will have waited more than a decade for justice by the time she gets her day in court. Complications after an allegedly botched hysterectomy in 2002 left the former schoolteacher in constant pain and unable to walk without the aid of a cane.
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The 60-year-old cannot walk up a flight of stairs and is unable to carry her grandchildren. And the doctor at the centre of the medical negligence claim did not have private insurance.
ACT doctors have only been required to have mandatory professional indemnity insurance since July 1, 2010.
Mrs McRoy said she would not have agreed to surgery if she had been aware the doctor was not insured. ''We had no idea that two doctors that were going to operate on me had no insurance. It was not something that ever occurred to us that doctors would be uninsured or that hospitals would allow people in there to be uninsured,'' Mrs McRoy said.
She has welcomed ACT legislation which forbids doctors from practising without insurance but said the laws should have been in place years ago.
''I do think it's a good idea for doctors to have to be insured and for hospitals to check that they are insured but I would have thought that it was just basic.''
Mrs McRoy spent four weeks in intensive care at the John James Memorial Hospital and alleges in documents filed at the ACT Supreme Court that she did not receive medication or bandages to prevent deep vein thrombosis and blood clots.
''I'm never going to get my leg back, that's gone, the life I had has gone ... but I do need to have it over, to have it finalised,'' Mrs McRoy said.
''A decade is a long time to have this on my mind. I want some justice and closure, but closure more than anything.''
She believes her case has taken so long to come before the courts because the doctors did not have private insurance.
The trial has been set down in the Supreme Court for December 2012.
Maurice Blackburn lawyer Thena Kyprianou said it was unusual for doctors to practise without insurance.
John James Memorial Hospital managing director Shaune Gillespie said procedures had changed and now all doctors working at the hospital were insured.
''There is a new system [under which] we have permission from the doctors to contact their insurer so we get a copy of renewal each year,'' Mr Gillespie said.
He referred all questions about Mrs McRoy's care to the company's lawyers. Little Company of Mary, the operators of Calvary Hospital, acquired John James Memorial Hospital in 2006. Mrs McRoy's operation and treatment occurred under the previous owners.
The company's lawyers and Mrs McRoy's obstetrician failed to return phone calls but are defending the claims.
