Well after 8 weeks of thinking my ligaments in my knee hadn’t healed I got the results of my mri scan, ligaments are fine but I have been walking about with a fractured fibula for 8 weeks. So Royal Blackburn hospital have cocked up. They x rayed my tibia which also shows the fibula on a x ray and completely missed the fracture. Not amused at all.

Would your treatment have changed at all? How bad was/is the fracture? When I fractured mine I was sent on my way as normal as it wasn’t worth casting.

So more “NHS do follow up investigation and find injury not immediately obvious on x-ray when patient first presented” perhaps?

Contact PALS at the hospital if you want answers.

Surely that’s “a doctor” balls up not the entire NHS?

Shame, I was expecting to hear of something amusing being left inside someone after an op!

at the time of the treatment did you make them aware of pain in your leg akin to a fractured bone?

They can only work on the information they are given from the patients, you cant expect them to spot everything.

East Lancashire nhs consultant cock up and gp for not looking into it more. I should of been none weight bearing for 6 weeks but I started to treat it on gp’s advice as a ligament tear and exercise it till mri scan. I did say however to the A&E consultant that the pain was around the lateral aspect of my knee so lcl tear but he ordered a xray of tibia and that was fine and told me ligament tear/knee sprain and to nwb for two weeks then exercise.

Fracture is on the fibula head.

What would be embarrassing is if you were an Orthopaedic nurse.

Just to be controversial – was the fracture visible on XR – an XR may be normal in the presence of a fracture….

were you advising the doctor what the problems were at the time of inspection?

Yeh the NHS phucks things up sometimes. So do accountants, lawyers, teachers, policemen, umpires, priests, you and your immediate family. What’s your point exactly?

You could try one of those no win no fee claims – but they would probably tell you that you didnt have a leg to stand on……… 🙂

*applauds *

at the time of the treatment did you make them aware of pain in your leg akin to a fractured bone?

They can only work on the information they are given from the patients, you cant expect them to spot everything.

If you’ve never fractured a bone before, how would you know that the pain you’re experiencing is akin to it?

well you would know that you have a pain and you would know where it is located. it wouldnt be for you to determine its a break, but let the doctor know all your feelings of pain and where they are, and let them sort it out from there simple really.
and I think an orthoapedic nurse would know

well you would know that you have a pain and you would know where it is located. it wouldnt be for you to determine its a break, but let the doctor know all your feelings of pain and where they are, and let them sort it out from there simple really.

Yes as easy as that.

If only.

He is a student nurse, so you’d expect him to know a little about what he may have done to himself.

I’m guessing it wasn’t the NHS’s fault he fractured it and he’s still alive, so I don’t think there’s any need for alarm here.

so a student nurse is on here slagging off a named nhs trust?

does this count as whistleblowing under the revised rules?

He is a student nurse, so you’d expect him to know a little about what he may have done to himself.

Sure he said he’s an RCN but yes he’d should have a better idea than a man off the street but knee injuries can be difficult to diagnose.

One can only suggest naivety in his defence; as time goes on he will learn that many things in healthcare are not as straightforward as they appear.

Only been qualified 12 months and having never fractured anything before its a new experience. But if my tibia was x rayed and having seen lots of tibia x rays at work the fibula is highly visible and fail to understand how it was missed. I appreciate people make mistakes, the way I got the injury was through my total lapse in concentration on my motorbike.

Speak with PALS ask to see the Xray sometimes they’re not that obvious.

Don’t whatever you do look up your own X-rays; you can and will get sacked and maybe worse for it!

Don’t whatever you do look up your own X-rays; you can and will get sacked and maybe worse for it

Crap, apply to see and obtain copies of your xrays and medical notes under the data protection act, there is a small charge.

Well after 8 weeks of thinking my ligaments in my knee hadn’t healed I got the results of my mri scan, ligaments are fine but I have been walking about with a fractured fibula for 8 weeks. So Royal Blackburn hospital have cocked up. They x rayed my tibia which also shows the fibula on a x ray and completely missed the fracture. Not amused at all

Just perhaps make a formal complaint to the hospital authorities, just as a record of the possibility the staff concerned are not up to the job and have mised other patients injuries, like an accountant missing a 0 off a cashflow, or a mechanic forgeting to tighten a nut on a wheel.

Do they not have a system of anonymous reporting of mishaps and near-misses, as pilots do, in order that improvements can be made without too much personal grief?

Crap, apply to see and obtain copies of your xrays and medical notes under the data protection act, there is a small charge.

He’s talking about the OP using his work login to view his on X-ray rather than applying.

Well after 8 weeks of thinking my ligaments in my knee hadn’t healed I got the results of my mri scan, ligaments are fine but I have been walking about with a fractured fibula for 8 weeks.

Still fractured after 8 weeks? And NWB for 6 weeks? With an assumedly minimal/non-displaced fracture – you sure?

What’s the real story?

bwfc4eva868 – Member

But if my tibia was x rayed and having seen lots of tibia x rays at work the fibula is highly visible and fail to understand how it was missed.

Not the same, but you could only see my hip fracture on one of the 3 xrays that was taken. They were shooting for and looking for something else in this case. You need to see the original films before drawing any sort of conclusions- few quid for a data protection submission.

No need for any data protection stuff, and probably no need for any pitchforks. Just get an appointment with the consultant orthopod that you are under and ask to be shown the X-ray, then ask if it’s obvious, and if so, why it wasn’t spotted.

You might get an apology if it was staring someone in the face, but it’s more than likely that it didn’t really show up.

Project; the NHS are committed to data security in a very big way, and looking at any patient info that you are not entitled to, even your own, is a serious breach of policy which is dealt with using a big HR hammer.

He’s talking about the OP using his work login to view his on X-ray rather than applying.

now that would be illegal using your work login and would be recorded, as if any memebr of staff doing that could alter their medical records or prescribe treatments they thought they needed

Data protection act is your mate and its legal and keeps you in a job.

Exactly Crikey.

Speak to PALS or indeed if you know them well enough, work in the same hospital, then have a chat with them.

crikey – Member

No need for any data protection stuff, and probably no need for any pitchforks. Just get an appointment with the consultant orthopod that you are under and ask to be shown the X-ray, then ask if it’s obvious, and if so, why it wasn’t spotted.

Good point, well made.

I do hope the injury wasn’t caused by some incompetence such as failing to maintain control of ones bicycle. 🙂

Glupton fracture has only been spotted on the mri scan I had last Wednesday, was rung by the doctor to come and discuss results today. I should of been nwb for 6 weeks but I’ve been walking with pain obviously since week three of injury.

And avdave yes the accident was caused by my incompetence haha.

fwiw sponging_machine off here broke his fibula during a 24 hour race, rode another three hours on it and it wasn’t diagnosed for 3-4 weeks afterwards iirc. He is a dietician and mrs is a physio. So yes sometimes they are hard to spot and the symptoms patient expreiences are not as per many other fractures. Also, as mentioned above you don’t necessarily to cast or repair all fibula fractures (iirc big factor is how far up the fracture is): when you go in and discuss with the doctor, you may find that weight-bearing aside, the rest of the treatment (if any!) you should have recieved is not that different from the treatment you did recieve. This doesn’t make it less of a mistake, but it may help to feel you haven’t lost quite so much in recovery time or outcome/prognosis.

Also: poor thread title. I expect if one of your colleagues made a mistake of similar gravity at work, you wouldn’t like your whole team (including yourself of course) tarred with the same brush, let alone your whole hospital or the organisation you work for. 😕

On a related topic – data protection – I’m not sure if there’s been some shake up lately but I’ve noticed a huge difference in my dealings with some hospitals both in a professional and personal context.

I can’t go into the professional stuff but on a personal note, my 5 year old son has a medical condition that requires him to go to hospital to be weighed, measured, bloods etc. This happens every 6 months and they plot his data on a chart/percentile graph. So, the time before last he was being measured and I was curious about his growth rate; comparing the data gives a clue whether his medication is working. I made the fatal error of having a look..! Wow, the reaction I got was unbelievable. I was spoken to like a complete cretin and told under no uncertain circumstances that due to data protection I must not look at my son’s data and must make a formal written application to look at it. What a load of Guff.

I’m convinced that when certain staff members are unsure of things or simy can’t be arsed they put “data protection” barrier up. Folk are so uncertain of this legislation they don’t challenge it.

Aye poor title choice it should be East Lancs nhs balls up. I’m gonna just rest it till I see fracture clinic next week and hopefully what’s shown is the bone has healed and that’s showing up. Wondered why it was bloody sore walking. My boss is disgusted and told me to complain. Matron on orthopaedics surgery.

I once underwent surgery under full anesthetic for the surgeon to retrieve a big R shaped metallic object embedded in my leg to be told post-op that this was in fact the marker system used by the Radiographer to indicate which leg it was. You’ve guessed it, it was my right leg. It transpires that the reviewing A&E Dr was an agency temp’ who didn’t know about the marking system.

That’s genius! I almost checked myself out of A&E with my hip bust, because when they took the x-rays, the technician took a look and said “Yep, that’s all fine, nothing wrong there”. Turned out he meant “These are BRILLIANT x-rays”