I was mistaken for a 24 year old

Published: Fri, 10/11/19

On Tuesday morning I needed to visit the emergency eye clinic at St Helier’s Hospital in Carsholton. I have had a slight problem with my right eye for quite a long time. One doctor and one practice nurse have told me over the years that it was nothing to worry about but if it got worse to present myself to casualty. On Saturday morning I was teaching at the seminar near Uxbridge and I realised that I wasn’t seeing too well. On Tuesday I had made it back to Epsom where we were staying and I took the trip to the hospital. I was seen quite promptly firstly by a nurse who put some drops in my eyes to dilate the pupils. (Which is why I was strongly recommended not to drive there and back.) Then my eyes were scanned and finally a doctor looked at the scans and examined my eyes. It seems that some of the jelly which is supposed to be attached to the side of the eyeball is floating around in the eye itself. There has also been some
bleeding and this is causing some obstruction of vision in my right eye. I don’t know yet what can be done about it and I may just learn to ignore it as I did in the earlier stages of this problem.

Generally speaking the service was excellent and at least I now have a diagnosis for my vision problem. However, the doctor needed to write a letter for my GP so that I could be referred to a local eye specialist. The letter was written and I was given a copy to take with me. I didn’t actually look at it until I got home where I noticed that the diagnosis seemed to match my situation. However, the name, address, National Health number and the GP it was addressed to were all for someone else altogether. And the date of birth was in 1995, I may be in pretty good shape for my age but I don’t think I could pass for twenty four these days. Maybe I wasn’t the only one with a vision problem!

On one level it was an honest mistake by an overworked NHS doctor, but at the very least it was a major data protection failure for the person whose name and details I was given and did someone else get mine? I rang up yesterday morning and an apologetic administrator assured me that the situation is fully rectified and I was asked to destroy my copy of the erroneous letter asap, which I have done. This is certainly not a situation that should have arisen and although I have made a joke about the date of birth there was a serious point to make as well.

The first thing I was asked when I presented myself at the casualty department was: ‘What is your date of birth?’ Then my surname and then other details. From then on, whoever I was dealing with, the nurse, the technicians or any other personnel, would initiate the conversation by asking for my date of birth and surname. It almost got a bit tedious being asked the same question over and over again. The only person who didn’t ask my date of birth was, yes, you guessed it, the doctor, and, if she had done before she started typing out my letter, would not have made the mistake she did. That hospital has a redundant failsafe procedure which is designed to ensure that each patient is correctly identified at all stages of their treatment in the establishment. I imagine that words will be had by the administrator and I hope the doctor does not forget the procedure again.

The point is that if you want to avoid serious problems arising it is necessary to build redundancy into your systems. The thing about redundancy is that nearly all the time it is unnecessary, eg ‘redundant’ and may even seem like a waste of time and effort. Asking my date of birth was unnecessary nearly every time, and it starts to feel like an imposition after a while. But in my case a mistake was made that the date of birth question would have prevented. In this case there was no real harm done but medical errors can easily be fatal if, say, drugs are administered to the wrong patient.

From the same journey I can give you another example of this principle in action. You may, or may not, know that I drive a rather ancient Citroen C15 van which I am rather fond of. However, this vehicle does have major blind spots where a car or motorcycle can hide. So, if I am changing lane on a motorway I look once, then I wait a second or two and look again which will give a hidden vehicle time to come out of the blind spot. Nearly every time the second look is redundant in that I have seen a nearby vehicle or there is nothing there. When I was driving back home along the M1 on Wednesday another driver attempted to overtake me on the inside and I only saw her on the second look, if I had just looked once and moved over there would probably have been an accident.

Consider what risks you might be taking in your life and activities. Then have think how you might bring in redundant safeguards to reduce the chances of something going wrong for you.

regards

Graham

PS When I teach martial arts one of the principles I bring in is redundancy, if you would like to find out how that works in a martial context then get yourself along to one or both of my events in November.

Beverley, 2nd of November http://beverleystav.uk/hema02112019.html

Salisbury, 16th of November https://www.iceandfire.org.uk/salisbury161119.html