NHS Communications

[Homely2]

I learnt something last week which is worth sharing.

I had to go to a and e a while ago when on holiday. It was at a big city hospital and a couple of days after leaving hospital they asked me to return and see a respiratory nurse.

I was keen as my gp practice has lost its asthma nurse, which is probably why I ended up in a and e

So my wife trundled me down to the hospital and i saw a really good nurse who attacked how I used my inhalers and changed my recommended inhalers. All good.

However my gp practice never got her recommendations and I never got a copy by letter.

After a couple of appointments, with the nurse adamant that everything had been sent, I started to investigate.

Lots of ansaphones later, I found out.

1. The nurse I was seeing was not part of the asthma department, she was more attached to the a and e, though from an advice angle controlled by an asthma consultant in asthma department.

2. The nurse was a very high quality agency nurse who worked sharing her great skills in many hospitals.

All this meant that she did not know the hospital admin fully, and I was not registered for the hospitals own app and asthma dept were not interested in me.

No registration for the hospital app, and not being on asthma dept list, meant that no communications happened to my gp or myself.

Eventually a superb lady sorted it all out and got my communications going via the hospital asthma department and the app.

I can now contact the asthma department directly via the app when I need help.

So all is lovely, however I probably had at least one very avoidable asthma attack due to my not querying the admin side earlier and my drugs not being altered.

It was a lesson to me, I should have queried everything at least three weeks earlier.

[Poobah]

Well done for getting that sorted though, that was definitely a tough one to resolve. NHS admin probably does differ from Trust to Trust and as you say, agency staff are a whole different ball game but they do depend more and more on them.

In my experience, any hospital letter received by my GP surgery that goes beyond one page will not be thoroughly read in full. I remember sitting with one GP for 40 minutes while they read a couple of hospital letters before prescribing the recommended meds. I had rung but just couldn't get the prescription updated so ended up having to make an appointment. That was before covid struck.

Even when my BP med changed on recommendation of my respiratory consultant, because it was on page 2 of the letter it had been overlooked. I rang the receptionist and gave her the date of the letter and the medication name but the GP ended up phoning me to find out why the med had changed as the consultant hadn't explained his reasons in full in his letter.

And 2 years ago when I needed Azithromycin the GP wouldn't prescribe it as it would mean reading my records in order to find the letter from the consultant about the ooccaional prescription. He emailed the consultant, who phoned me and then he phoned my GP. My guess is the digital records system doesn't have a facility for highlighting such things so they're notnota easy to find historically.

I know when my office went digital, all incoming correspondence was scanned elsewhere and was supposed to pop up on our computer inbox daily. It was a nightmare and we had absolutely no control over it and so many things were lost if a customer got one digit wrong in their reference or similar. Same with our outgoing correspondence; sent digitally to be printed and posted with various attachments. We had no confidence in the process and it also added delays into every piece of correspondence.

Over the years I have become more proactive, but I do feel a nag at times as my GP surgery is so busy.

[Wheesy in reply to Poobah]

I do not care that GPs are busy they should make sure that all correspondence with regards to a singular patient should be read understood and any reommendations recieved investigated fully and carried out to the lettter. We are all individuals and do not conform to their tick boxes. Some medics no matter who they are think that they know it all and cannot be contested. But they are not aleays right. So do what I do and do not take what they say but make sure that they make the correct diagnosis. After all it is our lives that they should be looking after. They dont know everything about everything

Happy New Year To All