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Care Opinion

Outpatient appointment

Posted By td_ans

"Outpatient appointment"

About: University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

(as the patient),

I went to a follow up outpatient appointment and the consultant who saw me gave me no choice but to have a medical student (female) present though the consultation. Throughout the appointment, the consultant was filling the medical student in with my details - and hardly spoke to me, including discussing the blood tests.

The issues discussed were very sensitive & I would have preferred not to have a medical student present. Had I objected to the medical student being present, it would have been too late, as he was filling her with all the details as I was walking into the consulting room.

At the end of the consultation - he said there is nothing wrong with me. I knew the consultant was wrong. To cut a long story short, a subsequent private consultation with another specialist (and blood tests) showed that first consultant was very much mistaken.

It is a pity I had to go private to seek a second opinion. I'm glad that I did not believe the readings of the first test: ensuring that the test was repeated, especially as it was borderline was a wise decision especially as my symptoms were still present. I feel doctors should treat the patient's symptoms and not rely simply on the results of one test.

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Responses

Response from University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust 12 years ago
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 30/09/2011 at 12:53
Published on Care Opinion on 02/10/2011 at 20:07

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on your experience at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham part of University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB). We welcome all feedback and would like to assure you that all comments are taken seriously and acted upon as part of our ongoing commitment to improving patient experience.

We are very sorry to hear about the experience you had whilst seeing a consultant in our Outpatients Department. This is certainly not the type of experience we aim to provide to patients. Your comments have already been fed back to the senior managers responsible for this area and they will be keen to make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. To aid this process it would be really useful to have details of the specific clinic and/or consultant involved.

If you feel able to discuss this in more detail and would be happy to provide us with some more information please contact our Patient Advice and Liaison Service who will be pleased to assist you. You can contact them by phone 0121 371 3280, by email PALS@uhb.nhs.uk, via the hospital website http://www.uhb.nhs.uk/pals.htm or in person by dropping in between 10am-4pm (Mon-Fri) to the PALS office located to the left of the Information desk inside the Main Entrance.

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