I've just been informed that due to a private consultant (nuffield) who initially diagnosed my four types of breast cancer and lymph nodes made a typing error so I received treatment for an aggressive positive cancer. Not the actual negative type I actually had. I have received unnecessary chemotherapy, as well and being told it was needing aggressive treatment and surgery
How do I challenge this error?!!
Good afternoon Anyaandthespanners,
Thanks for getting in touch and welcome to our online community.
My name’s Karla, I’m one of the Cancer Information Nurse Specialists on the Macmillan Support Line.
Understandably you’ve got serious concerns about how your care has been handled. If you haven’t talked to your consultant about what happened, we’d encourage you to do this. This might allow them to explain what happened and why.
If you have and remain concerned, the next step would be making a formal complaint with the hospital.
There is no standard complaints procedure among private hospitals, each one has its own code of practice. The national healthcare inspector in England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) signposts private/independent healthcare providers to adopt the Independent Sector Complaints Adjudication Service (ISCAS) Code. It looks like Nuffield do as this is mentioned in stage 3 of their complaints process.
This patient’s guide to making a complaint about private or independent healthcare could be useful to read through.
I hope this information helps to guide you.
Sometimes it can be good to talk about what’s happening with us. On our helpline we offer a variety of support where you can talk through what’s going on.
Take care and best wishes,
Karla (Cancer Information Nurse Specialist)
You can also speak with the Macmillan Support Line team of experts. Phone free on 0808 808 0000 (7 days a week, 8am-8pm) or send us an email or use webchat.
Ref: KS/SH
