aibu to photo copy my hosp discharge letter and post it to GP and hosp with errors changed?

[giraffescantdanceallnight]

It has many many errors in it a few are - that i was discharged from NHS ward to a private hospital, my meds are wrong, doses are wrong, has listed 2 identical meds one after the other and given different doses for each, symptoms was admitted with are wrong and treatment given is wrong and lots missed out.

It is written by a 1st year, so one who started last month. Had lots of huge words in it that I have never seen in a discharge letter before and a strange sentence structure. Written like trying to be very important but it is complete bollocks!

I want to photocopy it and us a highligher pen on errors and write in the correct thing and post it both to the hospital and my GP who have a copy of this and will wonder why the hell I was in for a week if I "only" had the symptoms that are written down!

I would

Would a red pen be better? - teacher style!

I would as otherwise they will never learn. Any future work they do may have a much more serious outcome for the patient.

Go for it, they need to learn, if senior staff have 'not got the time' to check juniors work someone needs to correct them. Otherwise they will be senior staff and making these mistakes that could kill some one

yanbu. do it.

i've had similar before with assessment reports that seem to be written about someone completely different. it needs revising - it will be in your medical records.

and as others said they won't learn unless corrected.

Do it. I have all the patience in the world for trainees but there's no excuse for shoddy work. Having the facts so wrong is unacceptable.

A couple of weeks ago I had a letter from a trainee psychologist I had been seeing. It was so inaccurate I couldn't let it lie. Wrote a reply highlighting the errors and received an apology

Did no-one go through the discharge letter with you before they 'discharged' you?
I have been known to draw their attention to errors before leaving the hospital and insisting that they re-do the letter.
My experience of junior doctors who have started on the wards in August is not good I'm afraid. They make a lot of mistakes.

Yes do it.

I had a similar thing in a report concerning my daughter's treatment a number of years ago. There was so much wrong with it that it really couldn't be left as it was. I rang the department concerned and told them that the report contained a huge number of inaccuracies and misinformation and that I wanted it corrected as it was going on her medical records.

I ended up having a meeting with the person who wrote the report and we went through it page by page, after which the whole thing was re-written.

Like your letter OP, I have no idea who this person was writing about, apart from a her personal details and the general gist, it certainly wasn't my daughter

The NHS have got rid of medical secretaries/typists who would in the past have typed and corrected these letters. Doctors now type all their own letters and it shows!

Meant to say in previous post that in the NHS trust where I world there are no longer medical secretaries.

It would have been done by a typist so some of this may have happened in translation. It could be a problem like him not checking them and the typist mishearing so administrative mistakes rather than medical incompetence. It might even have been sent out without the typist letting him check which shouldn't be done.

But yes it really is something that needs to be dealt with. Rather than just sending it back with the errors marked you would be best of either speaking to the ward admin manager or manager or go through your hospitals PALS. Whoever typed it is likely to be opening the post to so if you just send it back it might go, ahem, missing.

Really Agnes? What a false economy. I can type a letter in 100 seconds it would take a doctor 10 minutes to do. And factoring in how much less I'm paid I reckon I am about 100 x cheaper.

Bigbluebus no the discharge letters are not written until after you are at home, so sometimes you can come up later in the day to collect them or they are posted.

It would have to be one crappy typist for them all to be typos...my discharge rates/numbers are down as my admission ones. So it looks like I was pretty well when admitted!

Although they won't actually learn from it if you simply correct it and send it to your GP, as it is the junior doctor in a separate administration who actually typed the letter. As a GP myself, when this sort of thing happens (thankfully it rarely does) usually the patient would either ring/attend to discuss, or enclose a note with the letter to explain the inaccuracies. I'd be bemused if I received a teacher style/red pen corrected letter! Not to mention the issues about tampering with medical records. It's unfortunately not possible to erase/correct medical records from a legal point of view, although additional notes may be made to explain incorrect information. I do agree though that its annoying to receive a letter with a lot of inaccurate information in it, as well as the implications for potentially receiving incorrect prescriptions, as its usually these letters that we use to update repeat prescription lists. If I were your GP I would likely send a copy of it back to the supervising consultant so as to enable them to take it up with whoever wrote the letter. Hope you get it sorted out!

I took dd2's hospital letter in to show them on the second appointment. It said that she was 182cm tall. Aged 8.
We had a good chuckle, wondered if it meant 128cm, but no, she got the notes out and it was nothing like.