Can I complain?

[Frankieola]

I'm making this posting as I dont really know where else to put it. Myself and my parents who are in their 70's have recently changed our doctor and it has made us realise just how awful our old one was. My mum has been sick for a long time but within 3 weeks of registering our new doctor got to the bottom of the problem and my mum has had an operation and is recovering. I truly believe that she would be dead had it not been for our new doctor and am very relieved, But is there a way I could complain about our old GP?

[smudge]

Very sorry to hear about your Mum's negative treatment & hope she gets well very soon Frankie.

In the meantime, this may be of help:

http://www.thesite.org/homelawandmoney/askthes iteqandas/legalandrightsqandas/doctordilemma

[VillageVicar]

I think contacting your local PCT (Patient Care Trust) is the first step. I've had to file formal complaints against some GP's in the past on behalf of the elderly and this was where I always started...almost all of them moved on from there, including the BMA...so we got action.

I'm sorry to hear stories such as these...

I wish you well

Fr Bill

[MrXLA]

It can actually be a positive thing to complain, the aim of which is to make an improvement.
It could be that the old GP is clinically negligent.
As awful a situation as it was for you, the fact that your old GP could not reach a diagnosis and treatment plan is unfortunate, but not unusual.
Doctors are humans (on this site they appear to be merely someone to complain about and abuse, not that your post is in that vain by the way) and as such make mistakes, also people are not cars and medicine is not simple.
The training and experience of two doctors will never be the same and it is a FACT that however clinically excellent your new GP may or may not be he/she will have patients that they have difficulty or in fact never manage to diagnose and treat.
If two doctors saw the same 10 patients it is possible that each doctor would have a different way of managing them.
However that said there are some doctors that are in fact clinically negligent, but the mis-diagnosis of one patient does not place a GP in this category.