So my son had chicken pox, then he had some pretty awful diarrhea. Then his little sister got the same thing three weeks later - first the chicken pox, then the diarrhea. When my little boy (he turned three in January) started having little bits of blood in his stools, we took him to the doc right away. We took in a stool sample. After testing, the GP gave us the all-clear; just a side-effect of chicken pox. Lots of bland food later, he’s on the mend.
Three weeks after we took him to the doc, my wife gets a call from Environmental Health. After the normal round of identifying questions, the nice lady from Environmental Health says ‘your son has Shigella-based dysentery.’ Needless to say, there was some rage, some puzzlement, and some ‘oh shit, we’ve been seeing lots of friends, many of whom have small children as well, and both my wife and I have had diarrhea as well’.
Well it turns out the hospital systems never updated the GP’s systems with the quite important piece of information that my son had a highly contagious form of bacterial dysentery which he likely spread to his direct family and fuck knows how many other families through contact; it’s apparently easily spread by toddlers who are newly potty-trained because of their sometimes poor handwashing habits after using the loo and lots of bugs transfer among toddlers anyways.
Now it’s one thing for us - he’s basically a healthy chap, and with or without antibiotics he was on the mend and so were we all.
But for fuck’s sake! Environmental Health only got involved because it was highly contagious. It’s not like the GP surgery followed-up with us until we complained. What if this was a biopsy that came back positive for a malignant tumor and we went on glibly unaware!
If this was the US, I would be suing the shit out of someone right now. This is so bad it’s fucking farcical, and I could not be more filled with rage.
What makes you think you can’t sue the NHS? Sure you can. Hell, you can probably find a no-win-no-fee lawyer to do it.
Personally, this sounds like human error and I’m not someone who’s all that keen on the growing compensation culture so I wouldn’t sue, but if that’s how you feel, have at it. I’m sure you can make sure someone loses their job if you try really hard. :rolleyes:
I think it was a system error, not human error - the hospital (i.e. bacteriological testing centre) was updated, the GP’s system wasn’t.
And I’m with you - compensation culture is bad, but unlike the US, reporting this kind of thing in the UK sometimes gets results. The only thing that makes medical systems change in the US is either lawsuits or the threat of them.
I’m really just angry because a dose of antibiotics would have meant that a) the rest of us might not have gotten sick, and b) my son wouldn’t have had three weeks of awful diarrhea. And I want it fixed because it might have been much more serious.
It certainly sucks. Are you making a formal complaint? Can’t hurt (although if it’s means updating their systems, I wouldn’t hold your breath given all the Tory cuts at the mo).
NHS complaints procedure
Yes, paperwork is being submitted for formal complaint…
Still full of rage. I’m sure it will pass; the NHS has been pretty brilliant with most stuff, there just seems a bit of a gap in capability at our local surgery. We had another incident about a year ago, where my son fell off a chair and his shoulder was sore. Took him to the GP, who said it was fine but keep an eye on it and if he started favouring his arm to take him in for x-rays. Sure enough he had broken his collar bone. Once it was accurately diagnosed they were brilliant (same this time, I should note - follow-up from the GP was great once they actually knew what the f*** was wrong and that he had dysentery) but I was full of rage then too - he was clearly in pain, had a lump, and was already favouring his arm. Why the f*** not just order x-rays right then?
GRRRRR
This is why the last government introduced the “National Programme for IT”, to integrate all of the NHS’ computer systems. Didn’t go well.