Having a quiet ‘rant’ is good for you and I know how you feel.
In Leicester they devised a wonderfully bizarre system for notifying patients of results that didn’t work, created confusion and didn’t actually inform me of results. They termed the phone calls ‘appointments’ so that when i received a text message confirmation of an ‘appointment’, without any clue as to whom it was with, I was in a panic that I had missed something. I didn’t always get the calls and, when I did, the most I was told was ‘okay’ which didn’t reassure me.
Sometimes I get a copy of the letter with results that is sent to my GP, but not always. In the end I decided not to allow myself to get wound up by it, and so when I need results I make ‘Subject Access Requests’ to the hospital which cost £10 a time, and I get the full print out of blood results.
If anything that means that I am better informed than the Consultant/Registrar and considering that my eGFR is in a continuing death spiral without anyone noticing, it’s £10 well spent.
What any of us seek is reassurance that there is nothing to worry about and the absence of results is the worst option.
My next appointment at Haematolgy is the middle of October and my blood test will be carried out at my GP surgery three weeks beforehand, so there’ll be no excuses for not having the results – I hope. The point is that I can control my concerns a lot better if I know the results, even if they are adverse. If you don’t know it’s human nature to think the worst. If you don’t get anywhere as a last resort use an ‘SAR’ to which all hospitals have to respond by law. They will have the procedure on their website.
