Aibu complain? Dd medical notes (poss triggering)

[padwalk]

I’ll try and cut a long story short, but I’m feeling really emotional over this so Im not sure if my judgement is clouded.

Dd (15) has applied for the army, but there was a mix up with her medical records and somebody else’s, and her medical fitness was failed. So to prepare for the appeal we’re doing, we needed to request all of dds medical notes from our GP. I was told because dd is over the age of 12, she had to request and sign for them herself and physically hand them over to her, they couldn’t even speak to me on the phone for confidentiality, fair enough I thought.

Dd has been off all day, really upset, then she completely broke down tonight and it turns out it’s because of something she saw in her records.
She had been reffered to camhs many years ago, because I asked them to look at her because of my own mental health issues and I was worried about the affect on her. She knows about this, I’ve always been as honest as I can about it. She went twice and they weren’t concerned enough to take it any further.
The referral letter was from my psychologist at the time (one who i horribly clashed with and wished I’d put in a complaint about at the time for a different reason) and there in black and white was a complete list of all my issues, from severe trauma in my own childhood, to being sectioned when I was pregnant with my second child and all about me being suicidal, including the psychologists own opinion on why I was that way. There was much more but I don’t want to derail the thread too much. I’m so angry that all of this was literally handed to my 15 year old to read, and she now knows that her mother tried to kill herself.

Is this even legal for them to do? Do I complain to the gp, the psychology service? Aibu to take it further, or we’re they completely in their rights to do this?

I didn’t think I’d be sitting tonight comforting my dd, who’s petrified about what she read.

@Gwenhwyfar while your mother's, father's, little sister's or great aunt's medical conditions may be referred to in your notes, like in this unfortunate case, they are separate living people and so are third parties. This means anything about them needs to be removed or blacked out before your notes are handed to you.

This is why there was a court case where it was ruled that doctors could not tell a daughter that her father has a inherited life limiting condition.

OP I'm sorry you had to tell your daughter all this now and you have to complain particularly due to your daughter's age. Personally I would have told you to have a talk with the relevant ICO before talking to the practice manager. I had issues with a doctor years ago, and found a letter sent from the ICO about adhering to the law had a better effect on their subsequent behaviour then me explaining why they were wrong.

I think this topic in general is a bit of a can of worms. Lots of issues.

soupdragon indeed it does but the same can be said for the GP practice, they can only redact what they know needs it. In this case the issue of shared info lies with the psychologist, not the GP. Both OP & DD have requested the notes & so the practice wouldn't have had a clue about the surprise they were both going to get.

The psychologist has clearly not advised OP of the extent of the history they were going to share.

Wipe the floor with then! Hope you're both okay!

She can apply for army (junior soldier entry, I presume) but is too much of "a child" to handle learning this info?

It's an opportunity to show that people can face severe challenges & recover brilliant from them. Also, you are not her, so your records aren't about her potential. Your records are just your private info you want to move on from.

"@Gwenhwyfar while your mother's, father's, little sister's or great aunt's medical conditions may be referred to in your notes, like in this unfortunate case, they are separate living people and so are third parties. This means anything about them needs to be removed or blacked out before your notes are handed to you."

But these would only be in my notes if I (or my parents when I was a child) had mentioned them, no? In which case, the notes would be in reference to me as well and wouldn't I therefore have a right to see them?
Would a GP just find out people are related and mention relatives in the notes?

" Essentially, your right to want your information does not override someone else's right not to have theirs revealed."

But how is someone else's medical information going to be in MY medical notes, unless that person shared that information in relation to me to my doctor? In which case, they would be part of MY medical history.

Morning everyone.

I do actually get cherries point, and I don’t (now) have a problem with the psychologist/gp sharing information if its relevant - however I do feel the depth and opinions stated in this letter were far more than they needed to be. When I was in with that psychologist, I was extremely nervous at the time about any information stored, and we actually spoke about this and details that she said she wasn’t going to share with my own GP - so I’m very confused as to why this has happened.

The main issue I have with this, is not that it’s in dds notes, but the fact it was handed over to dd (who at 15, is still a child) without a second thought. It’s not a simple letter stating ‘mum has x,y,z and worried about the affect on child’ it is literally everything I’d ever said to that psychologist, personal childhood trauma, even things I hadn’t even told my own Dh.

After reading the helpful link to the bma website (sorry, I’m not able to tag anyone this morning for some reason) it’s actually brought up a few other issues too. One being, I was told because dd is over 12 that she had to apply for her own notes and I wasn’t allowed any information at all, this doesn’t seem to be the case - yes dd can apply for her notes, but as she is under 16 and I have parental responsibility, then I was in my right to apply too.

Other sections taken from the website I would really like to discuss with the practise manager, including ‘when information should not be disclosed’ which is which bracket I think this falls under.

I have a clearer head this morning, and I’m certainly not going to go in all guns blazing, but I do feel this needs investigated in depth and I need to know how it’s happened. I’m also questioning, as pp has said, if it was in fact the GP surgery who mixed up dds notes in the first place, and not the army side.

I honestly just want to thank you all so much, definitely been helpful to discuss this with you all and given me some extra food for thought.

Betsybignose, I want to say a very special thank you to your post and for sharing your experience. I’m sorry you had to go through that with your own mum. Your advice is fantastic, lots of things I wouldn’t have thought about, and knowing what would have helped you - I hope will influence how I deal with this and my own dd

Glad you're feeling better OP!

With regards to DD, she's 15 so definitely would be asked for her consent to release the records to you. Gillick competence comes into play with this.

I really hope you get a satisfactory response. If you don’t then please do take it further (I’m sure the local CCG would be very interested - it may actually meet the criteria for a serious incident)

Cherry is correct in what she says re the medical records & a redaction would only take place if the patient or her mother had expressed a wish for the information not to be shared

No its the other way around. The patient has to give informed consent for the data to be shared, not for it to be withheld. The fact that there are pockets of appalling ignorance and bad practice in data management in the health sector does not make it ok to ignore consent.

In this case personal and sensitive data is being shared not only with the DD but potentially with other third parties.

Genetic testing is not the point under discussion here and even if it were the notes should still be redacted to limit information to the specific points indicating a need for genetic testing.

Here's the BMA guidance updated for GDPR, in case useful OP - www.bma.org.uk/-/media/files/pdfs/employment%20advice/ethics/access-to-health-records-october-2018.pdf?la=en

Thanks for the bma guidelines, they were so helpful in helping me aricukate what I wanted to say today.

Update:

I called my psychologist this morning before I did anything else, just to run things by her and get some advice really. She didn’t think what happened sounded appropriate, and recommended I call the patient relations team. She also offered to see dd with me in one of my sessions to help talk things through with her and help her understand, which I think will be really helpful.

I called patient relations this morning and logged a complaint, they put it through as a catagory 1 - which is a frontline resolution stage.

I received a call a short while ago from the practise manager at my GP surgery as she had received the email from patient relations. She couldn’t apologise enough, and said they were going to be taking it extremely seriously. She confirmed it is a definite data breach and they are doing a datex (?) record with data protection. She says there are numerous things gone wrong, the content of the letter in the first place, the fact it was in dds record but ultimately she said it should definitely have been caught by the team releasing the record and it should have been redacted, she says they have made a serious error releasing third party information, and even more so to a child. She’s going to keep me updated throughout the complaint process, and the full investigation they are doing.

So I just wanted to thank you all (yet again) for the advice I was given, I am still gutted that this has happened but hopeful they are treating it correctly now.

Sorry for spelling errors.

I'm so pleased that your psychologist offered such practical support, both to you and your DD.
And the Practice Manager seems to be on top of this and will address it properly.
Nothing can undo the distress caused to you both, but you've handled this so well that
You and your DD should both be very proud of each other.

That's great news, glad it's getting sorted !

That's good news. Make sure also they give you a new redacted version of the notes so your dd doesn't have to produce those ones at the appeal or you don't have to redact them yourself which may look dodgy to the appeal. If you contact the appeal admin and explain there is a delay getting the notes they should give you an extension.
Similar happened to me a few years ago l applied for my now late mother's gp history as we as a family are appealing for a refund of her care home fees and have her correctly categorised as in need of NHS Continuing Heathcare. That's a thread by itself but l wouldn't trust any CCG as far as l could throw them after the way they have lied, cheated and misrepresented over mum's case....... but anyway.... in my mum's notes were some very detrimental statements about 15/16 year old me when l ran away from home making out l was the bad dun and responsible for my mum's poor mental state etc etc. Truth was my mum was toxic, emotionally, verbally and physically abusive and that is why l ran away. I rang and complained but didn't get anywhere unfortunately and got fobbed off that it was so long ago (early 70s) that nothing could be done.
Wish ld posted on here and got all this advice off this helpful lot l would have definitely pursued it further.

Excellent update OP.. brilliant news that it’s been quite rightly taken so seriously.

You sound extremely lovely, considerate & compassionate, OP. I’m sure you and your DD will get through this and be even stronger ❤️❤️❤️

Good update OP. What outcome would you like from them?

So pleased to hear this, it’s a really good response from both the GP and your psychologist.