Alert The Media

Hello There My Friends

I hope you are well and looking forward to the weekend.

As you may recall from a posting I entered in the New Year I was unfortunate to have been put at risk by a local GP who prescribed me anti biotics that contained a penicillin despite being told on numerous occasions that I am allergic to penicillin.

The organisation employing Dr Rajendram - Go To Doc Limited - have completed their investigations and followed the standard NHS complaints' procedure which takes around 4 weeks to complete.

I received a letter from their Complaints Manager (who is a lovely lady) this Wednesday precisely 4 weeks after the initial complaint. The GP in question is still suspended and if you live in the local area you will probably be relieved to learn that he has also been suspended from shifts at Tameside General Hospital too as a result.

It would appear that Dr Rajendram is very sorry for his actions and that in future he will ensure that any medication that he gives out to patients is housed in a sealed and labelled container. According to the transcript notes (Joan very kindly gave me copies of all the correspondence) Dr Rajendram offered to ensure that he placed medications in an envelope in future rather than hand out individual tablets (??!!)

I'm sure you will agree that this would not be acceptable and in fact it is not in line with NHS policy. I think that someone within Go To Doc pointed this out and consequently Dr R changed his comments. Neither is a written apology (or verbal come to that) sufficient to satisfy me and in no way does that make up for the pain, danger, trauma and distress that his actions caused me and my family. Indeed my training for the Great Run in Manchester in May suffered a setback as last weekend I ventured out to do another 10k but only managed 4k and then I was wheezing and spluttering. I need to build up gradually since the incident - I only hope that there isnt any permanent scarring on my lungs or heart, and I will try to run again this weekend...

The local paper (Tameside Advertiser) will be running a follow up article next week - I would like to think that this type of incident does not happen again and god forbid that Dr R should repeat the same mistake on a child or an older person? I shudder to think what could have been a very different outcome if I had not noticed the small print on the chemists' label on the tablet box. When you see the diagnosis on the Paramedics report of "Acute Anaphylaxis" it makes you realise that you have been very fortunate and simply that life is for living.

It also makes you view things in a different perspective and you get your priorities in order - thats a very satisfying feeling. So I am no longer running around like a headless chicken (or the Wooslam bird as my Dad says) and I am a streamlined, lean-process driven chick instead!

I hear on the old industry jungle drums that one of my buddies is changing her role and looking after a new larger region - I say Good Luck to her!

I will post the newspaper article next week - in the meantime take care, enjoy the weekend and as always people Make Good Choices!

From Your Friend The Energy Angel