Thu Mar 29, 2018 10:50 pm
#1601297
I don't have a solution, but a comment.
A few years ago I went to my GPs for a travel vaccination, they offered me a printout of all my vaccinations, which I accepted with thanks and took home. It missed out about 40% of all the vaccinations I've had - all with the NHS.
So I went back to the GPs and said "can you do something similar with my medical records" - eventually they grudgingly said that they could do a printout of my NHS medical records - which I arranged, and took away.
Not just about 40% of my vaccination records were missing, but so were several operations, two emergency admissions, and a known allergy.
So I sorted myself out with a medical records book - several are on the market, mostly but not all aimed at the USian market and with the help of the NHS printouts, some old diaries, childhood vaccination records my parents had in a box, and so on I built my own, rather more comprehensive set of records. They live at home in a book, my family know where it is, I take a photocopy of the most critical bits with me when I travel abroad.
Maybe it's the anally retentive aeronautical engineer in me, but if my aeroplanes have logbooks, and the NHS is unable to keep comprehensive and accessible medical records for me - I'll just have my own logbook.
So now do most of my extended family, after my experiences. My brother in particular has lived in two countries and had major medical treatment in a third, and his kids have lived in two countries. Maintaining your own / family records in the modern and mobile age may be for the foreseeable future the only way to guarantee having such records. No medical professional inside or outside the NHS has objected to helping ensure it's filled out.
As I see it, the NHS is extremely good at reactive medicine, but we owe it to ourselves to ensure we have medical records where these are important - not trust to the 1940s "cradle to grave" ethos, however laudable that is in principle.
G
I am Spartacus, and so is my co-pilot.