A Fife man started to read what he thought were his own medical notes only to discover they actually belonged to a patient in a neighbouring hospital bed.
The 28-year-old from Methil, who has asked not to be identified, has hit out at the “shocking breach of patient confidentiality” which emerged at the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, and has now made an official complaint.
The man, who was taken in to the Vic’s admissions ward for assessment of unexplained abdominal pains, has also complained that, despite waiting for nine hours at the hospital, he received no treatment and ended up walking out in disgust.
The man, a qualified chef who contacted The Courier after reading of similar patient complaints, said: “As far as I’m concerned the Victoria Hospital is absolutely pathetic.
“I’ve had a long-term medical problem which they haven’t been able to get to the bottom of. I ended up in the emergency admissions ward at the hospital at 10.30am last Wednesday.
“I was left on a trolley in admissions two for two hours and was then moved on to a seat because I was told I was ‘not ill enough’.
“They then brought in some drunk with a head wound, which made me feel like a second-class citizen.
“But then when I was given a bed back on the admissions unit, I discovered they had mixed up my notes with those of another patient.
“The front page had my name on it and I decided to flick through to waste some more time.
“But I started reading about heart attacks, diabetes, strokes and cancer.
“It turned out I was reading the notes for a 79-year-old in the neighbouring bed. I was reading things about someone that I just shouldn’t know.
“It was a shocking breach of patient confidentiality. When I raised this with a nurse, she said: ‘Let’s keep this quiet’.”
The man said it got to 7.30pm and he had still not been seen by a doctor or had any tests. He told a nurse he had ‘had enough’ and was going home.
He said: “The nurse replied: ‘That’s fine. We’ll see you as an outpatient’. But how can they treat me as an outpatient if they don’t know what is wrong with me?”
The man said he decided to get in touch with The Courier after reading last week about a vulnerable pensioner who was left on a trolley at the Victoria Hospital for 30 hours, before being attacked by a patient.
Caroline Inwood, NHS Fife director of nursing for the operational division, said: “We cannot comment on individual cases.
“We are committed to doing our best for every patient in our care and we take patient confidentiality very seriously.
“We would ask any patient who has concerns to make contact with the senior charge nurse on the ward so that they are able to deal with concerns at the time.”