Friend of mine has had surgery and still in recovery. I don't know exactly what. She is moving permanently back to the UK in a couple of weeks.
How can she find out what to do about her Chilean medical history? She doesn't know what to take, in what form to take, or even whether or not a British GP will accept it anyway.
Thoughts?
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Unless she has a hugely complex history it's probably not of much interest to a GP.
If she needs ongoing hospital care/reviews then communication between her consultant(s) and whichever hospital she ends up attending will be useful, so hospital discharge letters are of some value.
We get the odd person coming from Australia who brings some history with them but by and large it's not needed - in the 15 years of EU nationals coming to live in Scotland I don't think we received a single set of notes.
If one of our patients get mangled on holiday in Spain, they'll usually bring a discharge letter - I don't speak/read Spanish but the medical terms are very similar, and health boards have access to translation services if it is vital.
Summary: Hospital letters relating to recent events are helpful. Anything else probably isn't.
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From my experiences with surgery then make sure she gets a NHS number and registered with a GP asap, we nearly always treat patients coming from other Trusts or overseas as completely new cases and history is taken as needed so paper notes might be helpful but doctors will want to do their 'own' work for peace of mind.
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Probably Lygonos but anyone who knows.... - Lygonos
