to "mark" my hospital dicharge letter with red teachers pen and send it back?

[giraffescantboogie]

I was discharged yesterday following a severe asthma attack - had to go up today to collect discharge letter.

I write reports about children for my therapy work for SWs/Ed Psych etc and I would get in to trouble if I wrote such factually incorrect info as what Dr has put about me on my discharge letter.

Similar happened in September when I was discharged from same ward. It was slightly worse then - the most crazy being that I was discharged from NHS hospital to a private hospital! I went home!

I might also mark the title of this thread with a red pen!

Go for it, if it's information that's so inaccurate that it might affect your future treatment.

I was given my mother's notes to look after when she was transferred between hospitals after a stroke. I had a quick look at the transfer notes and found a number of inaccuracies that were potentially quite misleading - e.g. that there was no sign of speech problems when she blatantly did have a problem with her speech. I'm afraid I got a pen out (not a red one!) and corrected the notes.

Amongst the many errors on DS's disharge notes when he was born, was the fact that he was a girl. He's not. The hospital send their records straight to the births, deaths and marriages registrar, who was a little surprised when we told her his name.

I am half expecting him to be called for a smear test when he is 16.

Yabu. I think younger supposed to use green pen these days.

*you

• you are

when my DS1 was discharged from the neonatal unit it was in September, just after the new lot of registrars appeared. They sent one to the discharge meeting (there had to be a doctor, a nurse, social worker, health visiter, parents etc etc).

His summary of DSs care / conditions was so bad I interrupted him and did it for him.

It did make me wonder how they manage to care for critically ill babies day after day (and doing a fantastic job, mostly) when they can't read and summarise the care of one patient who had had a fairly typical journey (for his gestation). Still, the doctor WAS brand new.

I am still often asked if "i'm medical" by hospital staff or GPs or whatever simply because I picked up enough of the lingo to get by. (stealth boast!)

That is awful!

Mine says that I "maintained sats of 98% on air throughout" what utter bollocks! Throughout what? The 5min she saw me before I left? I had low sats on admission - hence why I was immediately taken to resus and stayed there for 4ish hours and why they had HCU consultant down! Was on 8l of oxygen and then 4l of oxygen - and sats were mid to high 90s on that! Her sentence implies I did maintain 98 on air the whole admission.

Treatment is stated as steroids and nebs. (She doesn't state what KIND of nebs, saying nebs is like saying "pills" or "inhalers" it could be anything IN them!) And actually my treatment in resus was - o2, salbutamol back to back nebs, occasional atrovent nebs, magnesium IV, hydrocortisone IV, potassium IV and Theophylline IV.

On one side of page it says I am on a 7 day course of predniselone, on the other side of the same page it says I have to have 3 more days of it...I have already had 2. 2+3=5! So is it 7 or 5?!

Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, letter in other room.

Starfish I shall use a green pen to correct my spelling from HCU to HDU - meaning high dependency unit.

Michaela it is frightening isn't it! And yet when I was in resus and very very ill they were like a well oiled machine. They all worked together well, they knew who had what, who was giving me what, any new consultant who was wheeled in to look at me was given a brief but entirely accurate over view. It was very reassuring at an extremely frightening time.

And yet this letter looks like it has been cobbled together in 5 min - it prob was - I am sure the F1 who wrote it was shattered and had loads to write. Not her fault entirely but not good enough - again!

They can be crap my son has a rare chromosome disorder which we recently found out its on the sixteenth chromosome on the p arm the letter our gp was sent said it was on the q arm given that there is very little known about these disorders the least they could do is get their facts right it also stated he had a duplication and he has a deletion which has very different outcomes!

Lolllllling at giraffe's first post

That is mad - even with my basic (first year Biochem uni) biology knowledge even I know that deletion and duplication on chromosome mutation are totally different. It is scary some times to think that other professionals will then prioritize /treat according to those letters.

bike - Did you open his nappy and show them?!

In my defense I am on lots of drugs and quite sleep deprived...what those drugs are though I won't state, I will just write I am on "meds/nebs/pills" Dr stylee!

Lol giraffe I was terrible at human biology I got a u at A level but my former tutor would be amazed about my suddenly acquired in depth knowledge of chromosomes I now know all about duplications ,deletions translocation (balanced or otherwise) and there implications !

Agreed it's crap

But here's what probably happened.

The F1 doing the discharge doesn't know you / wasn't involved throughout your admission. And it's being shouted at from all sides to do the discharge NOW to avoid financial penalties for the trust.

The a&e stuff will be on a separate bit of paper filed differently in your notes so the part when you were admitted will probably not have been looked at by the F1 doing the discharge. If you then stabilised and your sats as documented in your main notes were then 98, even on oxygen, that will be what they saw.

All your gp will care about on reading (assuming your recovery was relatively textbook) is do they need to make any changes to your treatment. Presumably you were given the steroids and don't need the nebs now you're home.

So unless you need the nebs now it really doesn't matter which specific ones you had (and there are far fewer nebs than pills)

Inaccurate? Yes

Annoying? Hell yes

Clinically important? Probably not

And a marker of shitty processes not shitty doctors (probably)

Hope you continue your recovery

After a myriad of tests my late DH was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They also discovered a tumour on his left kidney. He was referred to another hospital for the surgery as it was too specialist for the first.
2Nd hospital repeated all the tests (s they needed all their own info) and said that they'd whip the kidney out while he was under.
DH signed his consent form(too much trust in the white coats). On the way down to theatre I flicked through his notes to find he'd consented to have his right healthy kidney out!
Cue lots of flapping staff, one said "don't worry, that reers to when you had your kidney removed three years ago". My DH had never had surgery in his life, and why would you take out the remaining kidney anyway? Then the SHO (the same one who told us why they had to repeat the tests) said it was the first hospital's notes that were wrong.
They left the kidney in....
And I later found a post-it in his notes, saying beware of wife"!

Bloody hell, Cherrytree! That's shocking.

I think they use green now don't they?

Sorry but I would take your post a lot more seriously, if it weren't for the multitude of spelling and grammar mistakes within it.

Cherry that is shocking.
After I had DD it said in my notes that I'd had anti d. I hadn't. When I raised it they found the anti d I should have had still in their fridge!

I remember reading through my maternity note/booklet after being discharged after DS was born.

apparently my contractions hadn't started until 8pm. which was strange because my waters had broken at 4am that morning and i had been having contractions since 3am. so i had in fact been having contractions for 17 hours by the time i supposedly had my first one. if i remember righlt i was around 5/6cm by that time too.

after she checked me for dialation in the earlyish stages i stood up and and a large clot fell to the matt i asked if it was normal. in my notes she wrote that i had expressed great concern and needed reasurring about my labour. WTH

there was a tick box list of things the staff should of shown me/ spoke about to me before dischargine me. they ticked the lot without actually doing any of them. apparently i had been shown how to hand express the works.

In hospital, heavily pregnant with DD1 and needing a section (placenta previa). One consultant came and effectively told me I would need a GA as I had a high risk of heavy bleeding during delivery and it would be easier for the surgical team if I was already under. I had really hoped to have a spinal block, said this, but was told no. A couple of hours later an anaethetist (sic?) shot through the door waving a file at me, and saying (very loudly) 'I hear you're demanding a GA! Absolutely no need!' And then refused to believe I'd actually requested a spinal block in the first place.

A few years earlier I'd had my left side ovary and fallopian tube removed. Went for the post op check up a week or so later, the consultant (not one I'd seen before) opened notes and said 'ok, so you had your right side ovary and fallopian tube removed on the the 12th'. I said 'I do hope not.'

Dive girl I am not a Dr or being paid as one and this is not an official letter. Is there a reason you are so rude? Are you a Dr who makes mistakes often?

To answer someone else yes am on nebs at home, three different ones.

I was discharged then came back the next day to collect letter so no rush.

And F1 did know me. Was with me a few times and she reviewed me after lunch again before agreed to discharge which is what the respiratory consultant asked for her to do in the morning.

perhaps you should re-read it divegirl77, - quite clear from the OP that the issue was with the accuracy of facts, not the spelling and grammar.

hope you're feeling better giraffes, - certainly worrying when the doc starts talking out of their arse isn't it?