Last week, my assistant placed a 49-year-old patient with her partner as an emergency among the other patients of the day. The woman had called at 1:00 pm and at 2:00 pm she and husband were in a panic in front of me.
The patient has melanoma and read the result of her PET-CT in the patient portal of the hospital. Unfortunately, she has not spoken to her attending physician about this.
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As a GP, I had not yet received a message from the hospital. So, in between, I had to bring the bad news about a highly specialized subject through the screen of her phone. A bad news conversation is never pleasant or fun, but it can go well if prepared. It should never go the way it is now.
Transparency towards the patient is a nice development, but let’s agree that the treating physician first discusses the result before it becomes visible on the patient portal.
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