Can I request a report from the hospital?

[GraceUnderPresure]

I recently had an emergency admission & surgery in my local NHS hospital and am struggling to process what happened as I lost consciousness. Is there a procedure where I can ask for a full report on what actually happened so I can put it all behind me?

Your GP should have been sent a discharge summary saying what you were in with and what treatment you had. You could ask them for a copy of that in the first instance.
If that's not enough for you then you can apply to the hospital for access to your medical notes. But it's not a report you get, it's the whole record of that episode, investigations etc so some of it could be difficult to interpret

Yes definitely as above. If you do need/want the hospital records that would also be possible. Just for the future though I always ask to be copied into any hospital reports and I have never had any department refuse, so I always get the reports or letters as well as the GP.

You can do a Subject Access Request (SAR) for copies of all records held by the hospital trust in your name - if you do a search of the trust’s website under the subject of ‘Access to Health Records’ and they’re likely to have a simple
form to complete and list of required documents to confirm proof of identity (for the hospital I’ve just requested this from, you need photo id and a utility bill dated in the previous 3 months to confirm address.

There shouldn’t be a charge from the trust for this service although there is still the option for them to charge if the request involves a lot
of printing of documents or accessing records that are held in off site storage. You may also find the records are sent to you on an encrypted disk with log in instructions sent separately.

If, once you get the results, there are aspects you don’t understand, you can always ask the trust for a meeting with an appropriate clinical person to go over the records and discuss them in the form of a debrief.

Thanks everyone, that's good to know 👍