Can I get medical records from GP?

tawecdl

Another thing is that the doctors all told us that because the rash dissappears under a glass that it wasn't menningitis. This was false info, it can dissappear under a glass and still be meningitis.

anonymousie

tawecdl wrote: »

She was lifeless and had a rash when we went to the GP, she sent us home and said nothing to worry about. Even the paedeotrician wrote her a letter saying she should have sent her to hospital with a rash unless she could've 100% said it wasn't meningitis.

What my arguement is, she was ill for about a week continuously and then was diagnosed with meningitis. Why did no doctor gp etc cancel this possibility out before the paedeatrician diagnosed her?

Complain away, but TBH it looks like the doc was right and it didn't seem like meningitis when she saw her, after all you state in your first report of events that you took her to hospital after the GP and even they turned her away the first time.

Meningitis is a very difficult disease to diagnose in the early stages and she may well have had "just a virus" at the time the GP saw her (meningitis is a very rapid illness so likely to have been present for hours not days before she got really ill).

1jim

I have to agree with Nicki and Anonymousie, Whilst it is terrible for anyones child to have this happen to them (my brother had bacterial meningitis) it is well known that Meningitis is almost impossible to identify in the very early stages as the symptoms are those that you would expect to see with a generalised viral condition such as a cold. The fact that it took a week for your daughter to become "clinically unwell" and be diagnosed with meningitis probably indicates that she did not have meningitis at that point. I think you would get most healthcare professionals to say that the bacterial menigitis rash is one that is non-blanching (does not disapear with the glass test). As for what the paediatrician said about what your GP should have done, this was misleading and inapropriate, no one can ever be 100% certain that a cold or any other viral illness is not the very early stages of meningitis and to subject every child with a viral illness to a battery of tests including lumber punctures would not be ethical because of the risks associated with these tests.
I think what you need to do is sit down with one of the GPs you trust in your practice and discuss what happened in a step by step process, in my view it is unlikly that you will get an apology from your GPs because from the way you describe it, they did nothing wrong and no negligence occured. You can of course request the medical records but you may need your GP to go through them with you to explain what things mean and you may need (as others have said) to pay for access to these notes. Your local PCT may have a PALS service, you should be able to find this out by asking the pct or by googling the pct name and pals.
It is great that you do not want this thing to happen to others in your area but I am afraid that the same is almost certain to occur again and is likly happen up and down the country fairly frequently as this is the nature of meningitis.
Once again I am sorry that your daughter contracted this illness and I hope that my reply does not offend (it is not meant to) as this has clearly had an impact on you and your family