Mum Injured while at the Hospital.

jenhug

sadly though, as dedicated as your team may be, cover ups DO happen. I know this as I have been a victim of this myself. As has my friend. In my case the anaethsetist gave me morphine, depsite KNOWING I was allergic. It was then wiped from my records despite him admitting to me he had done it.

In my friends case, they removed a cyst the size of a football from her stomach after sending her home 3 times and telling her she was fine (being admitted to hospital by ambulance on blue lights twice tends to indicate you are not fine) blood pooling at her feet as she was bleeding so heavily. Lo and behold, all mention of cyst is removed from notes. Surgeon stood there and explained what was wrong in front of her family. Yet nothing in the paperwork, not even surgeons name in her notes!

Its a disgusting state of affairs currently, and I'm a big advocate of the NHS, but they are making far too many mistakes and cover ups as things currently stand.

meritaten

CiderWithRosie - If there is a page which is copied which is blank - then it is a page where information SHOULD have been filled in! The fact it hasnt been filled in isnt sinister in itself - but it CAN be taken into account by a court. Taking into account other factors of the case.

and one has to ask - why give a patient copies of blank pages?

You cannot defend giving copies of other patients details - there is NO defense to that!

lindos90

My query about the hospital sending copies of blank papers is more about being charged for them than thinking there was anything amiss really. I understand that under 50 pages costs £25, over 50 pages copied costs £50, so I was thinking they were photocopying anything and everything to make the total pages copied exceed 50!

ciderwithrosie_2

meritaten wrote: »

CiderWithRosie - If there is a page which is copied which is blank - then it is a page where information SHOULD have been filled in! The fact it hasnt been filled in isnt sinister in itself - but it CAN be taken into account by a court. Taking into account other factors of the case.

and one has to ask - why give a patient copies of blank pages?

You cannot defend giving copies of other patients details - there is NO defense to that!

I didn't try to defend giving copies of someone else's notes - I said it should be reported. Re the blank pages - it may not have been necessary to fill in the page but it still needs to be copied to prove this and also that no pages have been omitted/lost. This is what we do for solicitors etc the notes are copied in their entirety, it is true what you say though, a patient wouldn't need blank pages.

pauletruth

we lost our first child due to errors by the doctor that was looking my wife. i would have loved to have sued him and made sure that he never worked again. however having seen the nhs from both sides they are not coving up as an organization. doctors tend to try and hide there errors as they have god complex. however you would be very surprised by the amount of paperwork each patient generates. if its a busy shift its well within the realm of possibilty that bits get missed out.
sticking the no win no fee vultures on to the nhs just reduces the amount of money that is there for patient care.
the person who took penicilin because the doctor gave it them. yes an error happened however as you know you have a life threating condition you should hae checked what you were taking.

sadly when family members die people want someone to blame. its vry hard to understand that you loved one is dying. the patient and family often don't want to know the truth.

the health system is there to help support your health don't be a passive patient if something is wrong or they have missed something tell them and don't allow it to pass until its sorted. waiting weeks then complaining won't help. there are forms that the staff are ment to fill out when an incident ha happened this can be anything that effects patient or staff safty howeer there is no feed back to the staff filling in the forms so lots of staff don't like bothering. which is a shame as it could be a very useful tool.

housemice

I'm quite surprised no-one has mentioned the Health Service Ombudsman yet (unless I've missed it).

If you're not happy with the final reply you got from the hospital, the Ombudsman is the next step in the complaints process. ESPECIALLY if you think the hospital didn't treat is seriously enough, or gave you a shoddy answer. The hospital may think there's no case to answer, but that doesn't mean someone higher will agree.

I'd recommend that you at least contact them to find out if they can look at it. You can email them and their website is (I can't post links! Sorry, just Google "Health Service Ombudsman"). It doesn't cost you anything but your time to make an enquiry.

Caveat - I know people who have used them, don't expect miracles (they didn't uphold my friends complaint), but they're independent so at least you'll have the comfort of knowing that someone outside the hospital has had a look at it.

Also, the Information Commissioner would be interested in knowing that the hospital have sent you someone elses records, because the hospital have breached the Data Protection Act - they enforce the DPA, and can fine the hospital for breaching it. The Ombudsman might be interested in that too as its evidence the hospital's administration is rubbish!