To raise a concern about this GP?

[Thistledew]

My MIL is a retired nurse. Last week she phoned her GP and said that she was concerned that she was suffering from a subarachnoid haemorrhage (a bleed on the brain caused by a burst blood vessel). She had a headache, stiff neck and nausea. She has a family history of this problem as it caused her mother's death.

Her GP said that he would not call an ambulance for her as they would be likely to be too busy but that she should drive herself to the hospital and go to A&E for a scan. MIL fortunately took a taxi to A&E, where she was assessed as having a muscle spasm in her neck, which was causing the headache. There was no bleed on her brain.

It seems utterly alarming that a GP would advise someone suspected of having an active bleed on the brain to get in a car and drive. I'm considering contacting the practice manager and raising this as a concern for investigation.

On the other hand, what I suspect but cannot prove is that the GP has diagnosed MIL as having nothing more than health anxiety and thought that although there was no realistic likelihood of her suffering from a haemorrhage at that time that it was the only way to resolve her anxiety.

But if I'm wrong about that, then should I take it at face value and raise a concern?

you shouldn't/can't do anything. The only person who can complain/discuss about her treatment is your Mil unless she specifically gives someone else permission to do it on her behalf.
I honestly don't know how a conversation between you and your DH would go...would he be receptive if you suggested that she had health anxiety?

@Thistledew

It's fairly shitty for DH to get a call from his mother in the middle of his working day to say that she is on her way to the hospital for a scan for the thing that killed her mother, when in fact no reasonable medical practitioner actually thinks there is a realistic likelihood that she has that thing.

yup, but realistically what can YOU do? Its a really dodgy one because if the risk factor of her being right about being ill at some stage.

@WhenISnappedAndFarted

Health anxiety is awful. I've been there, done that. Diagnosed myself with three deadly diseases in a week once. I didn't believe the doctor and convinced myself I was dying.

The best thing for me was doing CBT, I don't suffer from it that much anymore and if I do start getting concerned I control it and forget about it a few hours later.

Did you have to acknowledge that you had anxiety around your health to start with? What made you decide to try CBT?

Unfortunately, if GPs ordered an ambulance to every conscious and talking patient who rang them and hypothesised that they were having a stroke/heart attack/broken leg etc., then the NHS wouldn't be able to function and triage at all. So I do think putting in a complaint is a bit unreasonable when ambulances are so overstretched

It is entirely appropriate that he isn’t going to hear any of her medical information. Lots of people would like to know more about their relatives medical situation to reassure themselves or help decide what their own responses should be. But life doesn’t work like that. It does mean you might have to live with your husband reacting as if things are life threatening when they aren’t on occasion but she isn’t doing it weekly so I wouldn’t get too invested in the issue.

Your op is about complaining/reporting the gp because of this.... It seems utterly alarming that a GP would advise someone suspected of having an active bleed on the brain to get in a car and drive. I'm considering contacting the practice manager and raising this as a concern for investigation.

But later posts say you really don't think anything was wrong, she has health anxiety and it's really about your DHs response to his mother's behaviours?

@Thistledew It took me a good couple of years to realise that it was me and not some kind of disease. It's really exhausting, the constant worry. It got worse and the anxiety went from just health anxiety to general anxiety and I was anxious about everything. At that point my partner said to me he couldn't carry on like this and needed me to get help.

@godmum56

you shouldn't/can't do anything. The only person who can complain/discuss about her treatment is your Mil unless she specifically gives someone else permission to do it on her behalf. I honestly don't know how a conversation between you and your DH would go...would he be receptive if you suggested that she had health anxiety?

He slightly is, but I have to approach it carefully. In fact, this incident was quite helpful. I was able to start off by saying how shocked I was that the GP told someone with a suspected bleed on the brain to get in a car and drive- and then 10 mins later to gently say that actually maybe the GP didn't think there was any realistic likelihood of her having that problem.

I want to address it as he worries about her, and that makes him grumpy and hard to be around. The trouble is that he has been exposed to her anxiety all his life and sees it as normal to trot off to the GP for investigations if one of the DC has a cough that lasts more than 48 hours. I come from a family of stoics that think you can treat yourself at home with paracetamol and honey and lemon for just about anything short of decapitation. So it's easy for him to dismiss me when I say that I think his mother is not thinking and behaving rationally about her health.

OP, I totally understand and sympathise with your position re: your DH and MIL as my MIL also has health anxiety and often contacts us with concerns which are complicated by her background as a health care professional.

But, please don't make a complaint/raise a concern about a GP if you don't think they did anything wrong. I'm married to a GP and I work clinically myself and its always upsetting when people make complaints/raise concerns. We absolutely welcome them if they are genuine and we can learn from what has happened and improve our practice or care but any complaint is something that the clinician is likely to go home worried about and have to do a fair amount of work (reviewing notes, talking to colleagues etc) to deal with. Clinicians are people too and situations like this can really chip away at your will to do a job that is already stressful, relentless and can sometimes feel very thankless.

If the problem is how your husband feels about the situation you would be best talking to your MIL if possible or he could have a conversation with a GP in very general terms about his concerns (they wouldn't be able to talk about your MILs specific case but could talk around how they establish if a concern is serious/what might be reassuring etc to put your husbands mind at ease a bit) They could also talk through what a SAH would look like and what to look out for, because just because it wasn't the case this time doesn't mean that it never will be.

OP I feel for your situation…but it’s abhorrent to flippantly say you are going to complain about a GP if you don’t really think they have done anything wrong. That sort of thing ruins lives.

Maybe he said get someone to take you and get there within 30 mins rather than wait 6-12 hours for the ambulance

I wasn't really being flippant- if the GP did have grounds to think there was a prospect of her having a haemorrhage then I do think there would be serious grounds for raising a concern about his advice to her to drive.

I think that what I was after was reassurance that I wasn't being unreasonable to infer that contrary to the information that MIL was giving us, the GP in fact had no such concerns.

Yes I think the GP had no real concerns but advised MIL to go to A&E to cover his back so to speak.
I went to a GP appointment and they wanted to call an ambulance. I declined but they insisted I drove myself to A&E. They knew I was capable of driving but wanted the hospital to rule out something ASAP. Similar to your MIL I guess, the only way to rule out the condition was a scan at the hospital.

Re CBT, it would be useful for MIL to acknowledge her health anxiety which presumably stems from the death of her mother.

@Thistledew

I wasn't really being flippant- if the GP did have grounds to think there was a prospect of her having a haemorrhage then I do think there would be serious grounds for raising a concern about his advice to her to drive.

I think that what I was after was reassurance that I wasn't being unreasonable to infer that contrary to the information that MIL was giving us, the GP in fact had no such concerns.

Did you think the GP thought she'd had a brain haemorrhage and told her to drive?.. at any point at all? Does she want you to complain?

YABU

Are you sure the GP didn't say to her "You need to get yourself to hospital" ? How would he know whether your mother can drive or not unless he specifically asked her?

I think it's outrageous you are considering reporting the doctor and why are you interfering on your MIL health issues,maybe you think you are doing good,she seems well capable of making her own decisions unless she's over 150 I wouldn't be bothering really

Were you thinking that you'd make a complaint against the GP which wouldn't be upheld (because your MiL is over anxious and regularly attends for trivial reasons) and this would prove to your DH that his mother "isn't thinking and behaving rapidly about her health"?

If so, that strikes me as a very flippant reason for, at least, causing the GP an enormous amount of stress and worry and, at worst, potentially destroying the GP's life.

@Thistledew

I wasn't really being flippant- if the GP did have grounds to think there was a prospect of her having a haemorrhage then I do think there would be serious grounds for raising a concern about his advice to her to drive.

I think that what I was after was reassurance that I wasn't being unreasonable to infer that contrary to the information that MIL was giving us, the GP in fact had no such concerns.

What a muddle of a post to make this point.

Did you actually hear the GP say the words "drive yourself to A&E"?

According to MIL, the GP told her to drive to the hospital, but if she felt incapable of driving part way through her journey she should pull over and take an ambulance from there.

That was MIL's description. If it is true, then I do think it is worthy of a complaint. I am prepared to give the GP the benefit of the doubt and instead believe that MIL is not being accurate in her description of events.

I feel sorry for those in the service industry to the public because any Tom, Dick or Harry can randomly "put a complaint" against them for no good reason, and just derail somebody's life unnecessarily.

MIL's account has changed in other ways. Before being seen at the hospital she described her headache as 'lingering'. After being seen she now describes it as the worst she has ever had. She has also just revealed that they didn't actually do a scan at the hospital but sent her on her way after diagnosing the muscle spasm.

I feel very sorry for your MIL's GP.

You MIL needs to address her anxiety,

I think it's ridiculous to consider raising a concern about this GP. If you suspect a serious, potentially deadly thing is happening then surely the right place to go is A and E. As PP have mentioned, we weren't there so we don't know how the full conversation went.