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Outpatient services

Posted By BemusedPatientNOR

"Outpatient services"

About: Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital

(as a service user),

I had outpatient appointments with several SCGH specialties, where I believe the doctors went far outside both their scope of practice, and the information I had divulged to them, to seemingly offer their commentary regardless. In some cases this occurred not at the appointment, but in their letters back to my GPs, allowing me no option to correct their 'misapprehension'.

Since these were new GPs (my others having left/retired), this then adversely affected my community-based care. However it's also true that even when I was able to immediately correct the doctor while still onsite, the doctors seemingly pretended I hadn't in their letters. 

It's especially frustrating given I later realised the specialists appeared to have no little idea about my actual diagnoses or long term/newer symptoms. They also several times failed to pass on test results (where the hospital reporter said I likely had certain conditions) to me or my GP.

It's especially problematic in that, as I understand it, hospital doctors typically have no apparent means of receiving results-based feedback as to the effect of their actions on patients, so I believe are free to blithely assume their actions are beneficial.

[I consistently found the nurses, radiologists etc at SCGH to be highly professional.]

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Responses

Response from Chris Cullen, Director Safety, Quality and Performance, Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Health Care Group about a year and a half ago
Chris Cullen
Director Safety, Quality and Performance,
Sir Charles Gairdner Osborne Park Health Care Group

Submitted on 19/10/2022 at 7:16 PM
Published on Care Opinion on 20/10/2022 at 9:53 AM

Dear BemusedPatientNOR,

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on your experiences while attending outpatient appointments at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. I’m sorry to hear that you believe information you divulged to doctors led to misapprehension and that this affected your community-based care.

All patients have the opportunity to contact departments directly if corrections are required in correspondence. Alternatively they can contact the SCGOPHCG Consumer Liaison Service (CLS) on (08) 6457 2867 or via email: CLS@health.wa.gov.au.

We are very appreciative of receiving feedback from consumers so that we can continually strive to improve our patients experience. I will ensure that your feedback is provided to medical staff in outpatients via the Medical Co-Director and that your experience is used as an opportunity to reflect on the service we provide.

I was pleased to hear that you consistently found the nurses and radiologists to be highly professional. I will ensure that this feedback is shared.

Kind regards,

Chris Cullen

Director Safety Quality and Performance

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful

Update posted by BemusedPatientNOR (a service user)

My post was more for the benefit of other patients, to place them in a more informed position than I was.

To be clear, I did not say that "information I divulged to doctors led to misapprehension". What I wrote was that SCGH outpatient doctors went beyond information I divulged. They did this in a manner that seemingly suggested they were operating off a pre-formed opinion about me, which I was not warned of, and felt I was left to gradually work out for myself.

With this kind of overly collegial and seeming insufficiently scientific culture that apparently stems from an entire department (rather than a single doctor incurring accidents in their practice), I am not sure that the model of request-amendments-as-though-genuine-mistakes-were-made is sufficient. For one thing, I believe by the time the problem is fully realised by the patient, relations with their primary doctor may already have been quite soured.

One reform which I believe may help a little towards fixing this culture would be the practice of cc'ing reports immediately to the patient. Thus in my opinion, limiting the potential harm periods, and -significantly - deterring the specialist from being less than accurate in their reporting.

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