This is one I could rant about. Not so much GPs, but our local... well, nearest anyway, hospital. My husband had a worrying experience with one of our GPs though when the doctor, who is also a chiropractor, twisted my OH's neck to try to fix it before he looked at the notes. He went awfully quiet when he read the notes afterwards and discovered that he had just done some rather severe manipulation on a neck with a great lump of stuff sticking into the spinal canal where it has no right to be. My OH has spondylitis in his neck and the doctor must have nearly wet himself when he found out what he had done. Fortunately, no harm came of it.
Our current GPs are great, including that one except that once. But the hospital's A&E department... well, when people get in an ambulance half dead, their parting words tend to be "No, anywhere but YYY hospital!" My stories are a small part of that reputation:
1) Three broken ribs, concussion (knocked out): breaks not seen on X-ray, symptoms of obvious broken bones ignored. As soon as doctor looked at X-ray, he said, 'Nothing broken, you can go home.' I was still on the gurney, unable to move. He didn't ask if there was anyone at home to look after me, didn't check my mobility. I was in no state to tell him where to go and stay put, so I forced myself to sit up, then stand and he thought that was fine. Soft tissue injury only, he said. Two days later I went back. This was not soft tissue only and I knew it. The consultant in A&E said, 'Didn't they tell you it would get worse before it got better?' Well I never heard that one about soft tissue injuries, but hey ho! I gave in and went home, followed advice and did as much as I was able once I could go to the loo on my own. I was schooling young horses at the time (that's how I got injured - I was stupid one day), and I was back riding three weeks after the accident with unhealed ribs. Could have been very nasty. The breaks were discovered by an X-ray six months later for an unrelated test and the healed ribs could be clearly seen.
2) Took a very weird bruise on the back of my hand to A&E. A great lump had come up from a very minor bump and I happened to be near the hospital so thought it should be looked at. Same consultant. 'Just a haematoma,' he said. 'I know that,' said I, 'but why has it swelled like that? Could it be to do with the medication I started last week?' 'No, can't be that,' said he. He didn't look up the side effects in his BNF, just dismissed it out of hand. Two days later I had a rash: the kind that gets NHS direct to get the nurse straight on the phone without putting it down first and has the doctor call you back in two minutes and say, 'How fast can you get here?' The out of hours GP I saw then did look up the medication and its side effects. Thrombocytopaenia, it said. Stomps the production of platelets that clot the blood. 'Stop taking the medicine,' he said. I did. That was Saturday, on Monday a blood test revealed a number 7 for platelets (I don't know what that means, but the book says it shouldn't be under 150!!!) My GP said, when I asked what it meant, 'Just don't bump yourself on anything.' What it must have been that Saturday night I don't know, but it must have been less than 7 because I had been off the pills for a day and half. The condition should have been picked up when I first went in to A&E. With the medicine stopped, it righted itself. I had been prescribed the medicine by a psychiatrist from hell and she was legally obliged, because of the danger of just that rare side effect, to warn me to look out for it, but she didn't. Two doctors and the possibility of bleeding to death from the inside because of them.
3) A broken finger that needed setting and wasn't set until ten days later when it had to be re-broken because the doctor only seemed to see it was crooked then and couldn't when I first went in. I could see it. Fingers aren't meant to look like bananas when looked at from above and I said so to the doctor at the time. Don't ever let a doctor strap you up too tight like the one who straightened my finger out did. I went back into hospital a few hours later on gas and air in an ambulance. I had filled myself with every pain killer I could mix without killing myself and if anyone had walked into my house and offered to shoot me in the hour before the ambulance came, I'd have begged them to. And I've had four babies. One squashed finger added all those together and then some.
4) Not in A&E but on the wards. Insulin drip, no glucose, pre-op. Nurses refused to accept the instructions on my notes about BS levels, didn't know anything about insulin/carb ratios and set the drip to make me hypo. A young doctor who knew nothing about diabetes and thought I couldn't possibly know anything either (only 35 years practice, remember?), said, very rudely, that I had to have the drip up and I let her just to keep her happy. I had to turn it off in the end because they stopped answering my bell and ignored the fact my BS was steadily dropping. I turned the drip off when I got to about 3.7. They wouldn't let me have any glucose through it so I had to drink orange juice pre-op and nearly waste everyone's time because they were worried about anaesthetic after the juice. The took the chance because I had a spinal instead of general.
Having written these out, I think I'm going to follow them up now I'm well enough and blow the hospital's reputation to kingdom come. There are plenty of people who will come out and add their stories too. And this is a hospital with a five star rating. :shock: Go figure.
Our GPs are mostly great though.
