Summary
Miss C complained that when she attended the out-of-hours service at the Royal Alexandra Hospital with chest pains the doctor diagnosed that she was suffering from flu-like symptoms. The following day the chest pains remained and she was admitted to hospital having suffered a heart attack. Miss C said that she had reported a family history of heart trouble and that she had had ECGs (electrocardiographs - tests to record the electrical activity of the heart) taken previously at the hospital. She felt the doctor should have taken note of this and conducted further tests.
We took independent advice from one of our GP advisers and determined that the doctor who saw Miss C when she attended the out-of-hours service had carried out an appropriate assessment based on the symptoms which were recorded. There was no indication from the medical records that Miss C had reported the previous ECGs or family history of heart problems. The symptoms which Miss C presented with were not indicative of a patient suffering a heart attack. We did not uphold the complaint.
Related reading
View Decision Report 201500001 as a PDF (11.1 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018