Patient Correspondence

This large series of files comprises correspondence with the public who wrote to the Association about their patient experiences. The Patients Association provided contact details, advice, recommendations, information and in some cases support in proceedings taken up with health authorities. The Association had a dedicated Patient Advisory Service staffed by experienced and knowledgeable people who also had access to medical specialists and legal professionals.

The public's experiences with the entire range of health services, both NHS and private, are covered in this series. Recurrent themes are the GP-patient relationship; patient-consultant or specialist relationship; doctor and patient attitudes; dissatisfaction with service availability or efficiency or conduct of health professionals; hospital waiting lists; misdiagnoses or failure to diagnose a condition; patient access to their medical records and concern about content input by doctors; confidentiality of medical records; utility and availability of complaints systems; frustrations with the service or bureaucracy; side effects of prescribed drugs and treatments; bereaved relatives of patients, notably in cases of infant death; treatment and experience in hospital; cost of dental services; the causes of unsuccessful surgical procedures; errors of clinical judgment; claims for medical accidents or medical negligence and avenues for bringing medical professionals and health authorities to account; information on how to complain; availability of social care services; maternity and post-natal care services, including home confinements and home births; patient rights in hospital; patient rights with regard to GP services; standards of post-operative care; identifying appropriate self-help organisations; GP attitudes to mental health problems; GP interpretation of physical symptoms; addiction to prescribed medicines; pay services in the NHS, especially prescription lists and charges; treatment of and services for older people.

These files comprise many detailed case histories, with intimate personal data as well as personal opinions and feelings expressed about the health system and service, health professionals in general, and individual health professionals and hospitals. They provide evidence of changes in patient awareness of and assertion of their rights and changes in the doctor-patient relationship from the 1970s to the early 1990s. In addition they illustrate the growing network of voluntary self-help organisations.

In the early 1980s the Patients Association made efforts to computer analyse the patient complaint correspondence to identify recurrent themes and trends in complaints. This is documented in Section D, files D/13/1-5.

1976-1991

53 boxes

Series of files arranged in alphabetical order by surname of the correspondent.

Closed until 1 January 2092.