Disclosure of pateint confidentiality

Cooper18

miss_independent wrote: »

FWIW I do think that before a surgical procedure, a pregnancy test SHOULD be done as a matter of routine.

However, in my case - as Security Guy was pointing out, it was a CT scan. Of what turned out to be a polyp on my sinus! It wasn't even a gynae issue. And the main problem was the attitude of the member of staff and the fact it wasn't raised or dealt with sensitively or privately.

I don't know anything about your particular scan but a CT of your head will cause your gynae bits to receive a radiation dose too, unless you leave them outside the room. Perhaps if you had been treated with a bit of respect and in private the question wouldn't even have given you pause for thought.

mountainofdebt

I remember asking a woman if she was, or could be pregnant, before doing an abdominal x ray on her ......she replied no and when the x ray was developed there was a lovely x ray of a 6 month fetus.

Needed a good drink that night I can tell you!

miss_independent

Cooper18 wrote: »

I don't know anything about your particular scan but a CT of your head will cause your gynae bits to receive a radiation dose too, unless you leave them outside the room. Perhaps if you had been treated with a bit of respect and in private the question wouldn't even have given you pause for thought.

Lol, yeah and if I HAD have been pregnant and my Mum found out in a hospital corridor (in the hospital where she worked) in front of a load of people then I could assure you my gynae bits would have recieved more than a dose of radiation! :rotfl:

securityguy

Cooper18 wrote: »

I don't know anything about your particular scan but a CT of your head will cause your gynae bits to receive a radiation dose too,

This study is of pelvic CT in which a foetus is directly within the scan. How many orders of magnitude less than this already acceptable dose is a head CT?

Body CT During Pregnancy: Utilization Trends, Examination Indications, and Fetal Radiation Doses
Shlomit Goldberg-Stein, Bob Liu, Peter F. Hahn and Susanna I. Lee
American Journal of Roentgenology 2011 196:1, 146-151

Pregnant women exposed to less than 500 mGy display no increase in adverse pregnancy outcomes with observed background rates of spontaneous abortion, fetal malformation, and intrauterine growth retardation. A fetal radiation dose of 100 mGy is estimated to increase risk for childhood cancer by 0.1%. However, consensus recommendations agree that this risk of childhood cancer becomes negligible at doses of less than 50 mGy [19–21]. Previous dose modeling studies using anthropomorphic phantoms and various scanners have estimated that an abdominopelvic CT examination of a pregnant patient delivers 10–25 mGy of radiation to the fetus. In our series, in which dose calculations were derived directly from examinations performed in clinical practice, a similar but slightly wider range of fetal radiation doses was observed. The average fetal radiation dose in our series was 24.8 mGy, with a range of 6.7–56 mGy. One examination exceeded the 50-mGy consensus threshold for negligible fetal risk of childhood cancer. Our results are fairly similar to those of Lazarus et al. [5], who reported a mean dose of 17.1 mGy (range, 8.0–44 mGy) from CT of the abdomen and pelvis.


Read More: http://www.ajronline.org/doi/full/10.2214/AJR.10.4271

securityguy

miss_independent wrote: »

Lol, yeah and if I HAD have been pregnant and my Mum found out in a hospital corridor (in the hospital where she worked) in front of a load of people then I could assure you my gynae bits would have recieved more than a dose of radiation! :rotfl:

Precisely. If doctors talked to women's faces, rather than treating them as wombs on legs where their potential to be carrying a baby is more important that the woman herself, these sorts of debates might not arise. Should all women of child-bearing age be prevented from drinking, on the offchance that they might be pregnant? Where is my copy of The Handmaid's Tale?

Cooper18

securityguy wrote: »

This study is of pelvic CT in which a foetus is directly within the scan. How many orders of magnitude less than this already acceptable dose is a head CT?

Body CT During Pregnancy: Utilization Trends, Examination Indications, and Fetal Radiation Doses
Shlomit Goldberg-Stein, Bob Liu, Peter F. Hahn and Susanna I. Lee
American Journal of Roentgenology 2011 196:1, 146-151

I imagine that an abdominal CT carried out on a pregnant patient is justified under IRMER. You don't just do it for the craic. Conversely a CT of someone's sinuses is unlikely to be life or death so would unlikely be justifiable if they were pregnant? Unless the standard is lower for that region? I don't know enough about CT departments and their requirements to get into much detail.

miss_independent

securityguy wrote: »

Precisely. If doctors talked to women's faces, rather than treating them as wombs on legs where their potential to be carrying a baby is more important that the woman herself, these sorts of debates might not arise. Should all women of child-bearing age be prevented from drinking, on the offchance that they might be pregnant? Where is my copy of The Handmaid's Tale?

Try the shelf next to your copy of The Female Eunuch lol. In all seriousness, now that I'm older I don't mind being asked to take a pregnancy test or "any chance you might be pregnant?". As a teenager, being treated really rudely and judgementally by a member of the NHS staff who actually said the words, "I think there is a good chance you are pregnant" AFTER me telling her I was not sexually active, I objected.

It is absolutely a matter or tact, and ABOVE all sensitivity for someone's confidentiality.

I have lost count of the number of times I have felt judged about my sexual activity by nurses, pharmacists and doctors from age 12 onwards. And I'm not a prude and I'm not ignorant as to why certain questions are asked but there is a way of asking them. And much care should be taken as to how public the setting is.

Cooper18

mountainofdebt wrote: »

I remember asking a woman if she was, or could be pregnant, before doing an abdominal x ray on her ......she replied no and when the x ray was developed there was a lovely x ray of a 6 month fetus.

Needed a good drink that night I can tell you!

Been there, done that. Glad I'm not the only one that hits the bottle! :beer:

skintchick

Tinks32 wrote: »

She only found out 3 days before the letter arrived, I am far from upset, she is my daughter and i love her unconditionally. Why would I be upset? She hadn't been for a scan, it was an appointment for a scan at the end of March. She is very early on in the pregnancy.

That timescale doesn't ring true, sorry.

My experience of being pregnant (six pregnancies so far) is that you get a positive test around week 5/6. You call the Gp surgery and they won't book you for a booking in till 9 weeks in most areas.

You can;t book a scan till the hospital has your notes. They get these from the MW, who fills them in at your booking in.

I cannot see how your DD has a scan booked if she only got a positive test 3 days ago. If her scan is for 4 weeks' time that would make her around 8 weeks now.

Even if she had had a booking in, I can't see she's had time to get a positive test, phone the GP, book a MW appointment, get the notes to the hospital (which round here takes a full week), and then get a letter about a scan, whcih in itself would take a few days to process.

Sorry but I think she's known about this longer than she's telling you.

LittleMax

I would speak to your daughter about whether she wishes to pursue a complaint, or indeed whether she would like you to pursue a complaint on her behalf. Although it is too late for you hence a lot of people saying move on, it could prevent this happening to another family. The complaint should be addressed to the Head of Information Governance - I wouldn't go through PALs. Ironically they won't accept a complaint from you as it is your daughter's data that has been breached, and as she is Gillick competent she can raise a complaint herself. However if you do raise the complaint they will just need to seek your daughter's permission to investigate. Personally I would probably go down this route, if only to highlight that they do know that your daughter was
Gillick competent ... they can't have it both ways. I would be seeking assurance that suitable procedures have been put in place across all departments for addressing all post to the individual where they are Gillick competent and have expressed a wish for their parents not to know about their treatment.