lola_run wrote: I need to ask my parents to get a full blood test to check for any evidence of illnesses, as I will shortly be undergoing anaesthesia. Will most doctors understand what a 'full blood test' is or should I spell out what things needed to be tested? I'd like to hear from anyone who has undergone same procedure.
eth0_ wrote: Why do they need to test your parents' blood...?
DrIndy wrote: don't stress. Doctors know exactly what to check for. The key issues are to check the blood count for haemoglobin to make sure you are not anaemic, the coagulation to make sure you won't bleed excessively, kidney function and electrolytes to make sure anaesthesia is safe. They may add other tests depending on medical background (if any) or if there is a specific need (such as liver enzymes if you have a liver problem). Don't stress, you'll be fine!
lola_run wrote: To see if any diseases run in my family.
eth0_ wrote: You know you can ask your doctor why they are doing x, y and z at the time, they'll be happy to explain. They want to find out if your parents are suffering undiagnosed illness before operating on you? Must be a pretty serious op then. Good luck with it.
lola_run wrote: It's not an operation, just some tests. I was told that the anaesthesiest will ned to know as much information as possible.
Tree wrote: i think lola_run has simply decided she should get her parents tested. I doubt the anaethetist would have suggested it. usually they'd ask about any history of family illnesses.
Tree wrote: i've only ever received one print out of a blood test and this was an IgE i requested myself. The GP can't give you your parents results, you're a third party, it's against the law for him to divulge this information to you. if your gastroenterologist wants your parents results, then he will have to go to their gp himself and request them with good reason. tbh the only gastro conditions i can think of off hand that can be diagnosed from unknown using a bloodtest are the autoimmune style ones.
Tree wrote: i'd assume results arent released in general because most ppl dont understand what they mean. and also the tendancy to run off and self diagnose when you're given a set of numbers you dont really understand can be quite dangerous.
lola_run wrote: LOL!!! Well a good doctor would sit you down and explain in lay terms what everything means. As for self diagnosis, that's not an issue as most drugs to treat things have to got on prescription i would have thought, so anything else would not be that harmful.
eth0_ wrote: If you ask for a print out of your blood test results, the GP will give it to you. Mine has no problem with printing out results, scans etc, she knows I have an interest in medicine and usually explains things in more detail than she would with other patients. As for the results for your parents, your doctor could request these from their GP with their permission. You have to remember GP's - and especially hospital doctors - are very pressed for time and often only have 10-15 mins to spend with each patient. They don't have time to explain everything, or the resources to print out every scrap of info for you.
eth0_ wrote: You clearly know very little about medicine in this country Lola. Doctors are not on minimum wage but they're not 'rich' by any stretch of the imagination, at least not until they reach consultant rank. I have friends who are doctors who regularly go months without pay when they change to a new hospital. The money doctors earn is in line with the toughness of the job, the long hours and the huge malpractice insurance all doctors must have. I read somewhere that if you take the 90 hour weeks junior doctors do, and divide their monthly salary by those hours, they aren't on much more than minimum wage. Registrars earn more but still work long and unsocial hours. If there was any *NEED* for your doctor to ask about family history, they would ask. I find it shocking that you seem to think you know better than someone who is a qualified doctor. If you really think you need every test under the sun done, why don't you go to Charter medical in Smithfield and get their battery of tests, MRI scans, bone density scans etc done? Because you're asking way too much of the primary care system in any country, never mind Ireland.http://www.chartermedical.ie/
DrIndy wrote: Now now - no doctor bashing please. It irritates me to no end, I drive a crappy wee car and have barely enough money left over to go out at the weekends and take the occasional holiday. Blood tests are numbers on paper - many people have mildly deranged results in an ordinarily well person and so are irrelevant. Blood tests complement a doctors clinical judgement of a situation and very few diseases can be diagnosed on the results alone (high cholesterol being one of the few examples) - only in taking them in context. If I were to break down a blood test for every patient, I would probably just scare them (Your kidneys aren't 100%, you're calcium is a little low, your liver is a little off and you're a touch anaemic). Instead if the patient is fine, you just monitor them and recheck in a years time to make sure they are not getting worse. I all depends on the context and what other things are going on with them.
lola_run wrote: Well, fortunately you're not my doctor! My doctor goes through everything in detail.
eth0_ wrote: Fortunately for DrIndy he's not your doctor, I would say! Lola you're really offending a lot of people on this forum with your bad attitude toward Irish medicine. If it's that bad why don't you deal exclusively in private doctors or have all your treatment in Germany?
nurse_baz wrote: lola_run there was a period of time there that you were getting a hard time from other members and I thought that maybe they were being harsh on you. But from reading most of your recent posts i'm changing my mind. It really does seem that from the tone and content of most of your posts your either taking the p1ss or setting out purposefully to troll or somesuch. you seem to be trying to stir things up by creating nonsense posts or asking for advice/input and then basically throwing anything that anyone says back at them. What would be really cool is if you would either a) stop taking the p1ss and act normally or b) don't bother posting anymore if your intention is just to rise things
lola_run wrote: I personally do have all my treatment done elsewhere, but in this case I need to deal with the Irish system for the reasons explained above. PS: I'm not alone in my bad attitude towards Irish medicine, I have personally known people here in Ireland who have died because of bad doctors/errors by specialists. I can't remember the amount of times I was wrongly diagnosed by doctors here. The bad service is without a doubt partly down to a lack of resources... If people were prepared to pay higher social security contributions, we'd have a better service.
eth0_ wrote: How much tax are you paying on your text message job? If it's the same job a friend of mind does, it's nothing at all!! The problem is not with how much social security we pay, god knows I pay enough, it's how the government allocate that is the problem. Free healthcare is for those who cannot afford it. If you have a job, get health insurance like the rest of us, and stop grumping because your overworked public doctor doesn't have the time to waste explaining the ins and outs of every test result, when there are people sicker than you who need his help. Your attitude really disgusts me. People die in hospital all the time, in every country. It's rarely because of malpractice. Ireland has a pretty low rate of 'incidents' compared to the rest of the EU.
