uk hospital medical notes

[susie]

Hi at last we will be moving to France in February. My husband will need hospital treatment twice a year. Can we bring his hospital notes with us and will they need to be translated. We are worried that there will be confusion as we only speak a limited amount of French at the moment.

[Âme]

You most likely need to bring the succinct record of treatment kept by your GP rather than the full hospital notes. Get these GP notes before you leave as in my case they couldn't be sent outside the UK & I was charged £15 to send to a UK address!

So far (in four years) I have found that every doctor I've seen speaks enough English to understand the notes, and I have never been asked for a translation. Medical language is very similar and chemical names are the same, though there can be some variance in trade names. I.e. I sometimes get the same chemical packaged by a different pharmaceutical company.

Why not start looking up vocabulary for the particular condition(s) so that you are familiar with some basic terms & treatments?

Good luck with the planning & the move [:D]

[Junlesley]

I was more fortunate I got my hospital notes sent here with no cost, just approach your hospital and see what they say.

Also a very good book that you should'nt be without is Glossary of Medical Health and Pharmacy Terms, French-English English-French available from Amazon, its surprising how often it will come in handy, even for something as simple as a splinter!

[Benjamin]

When we registered with our French doctor he sent us off to have blood and urine tests as a matter of course. Mrs Benjamin's disability was fist diagnosed 30 years ago but he still sent her to have full brain and spinal scans (these weren't available when she was first diagnosed).

Coincidentially he's arranged for her to see a specialist with a view to being assessed for some recent treatment which may help. He asked us to write out the full history of her disability, fortunately in English, as he speaks it perfectly. He made his notes for the specialist from our notes and then took a photocopy of our notes and enclosed them with his own.

When I said I'd better do the translation into French he said not to bother as most French doctors, even if they chose not to speak English, can at least read it. It stems from the fact that most medical research is initially published in English.

[Nickel]

Hello,

Might I suggest all you really need (if anything at all or depending on the condition ) is a resumé to include your

medical history, diagnosis, current treatment/medication and recent/relevant test results.

These could be provided by your GP as a computer print out or letter.

However your new GP here will take his own history and request his own tests etc and with this in mind, if your French is not too good at the moment then ideally a translation would make sense. Although many medical terms are similar in both languages it is often what is written between them that is not and it may be wrong to think your new GP will have an adequate knowledge of English.

Good luck with the move

 

 

 

 

 

[susie]

Hi ya

Just a final word on this subject, as Nickel said, the hospital and our GP are doing exactly that. They are writing a full history for us to bring and I will try and get the reports translated as well. Also they said that if the hospital should need any of the notes they will send them over. All settled, thanks for all replies

Susie

[maude]

We moved to the Vendee in 2003, we provided notes from our GP practice which were cast aside by the Medicin here without a glance. No questions were asked about past history, family history, allergies etc, all is based on blood tests. I posed my concern on websites here but no one else seemed to think this was odd. Our GP here is pleasant enough and speaks quite good English but only wants to know what the blood tests tell him. I think this is part of the French mind-set.

[Bluebell]

We never received any notes, despite asking for them. Even with the complications of the John's history, his GP looked at his UK medication then started from scratch with a full medical, blood tests etc. We even found out that John had a leaking heart valve that had never been picked up in the UK (although his GP there had been treating him for blood pressure probs!). In fact, we both now have access to a cardiologist that was never made available to us on the NHS. My own GP is homeopathic, which has some pluses and some negatives, and also took the steps to go for a full medical, which picked up some issues missed back in Blighty. All in all, we are both very pleased with the service we get and don't regret not having got hold of our notes.

regards, Tina