HEALTHCARE IS WHAT YOU DO FOR YOURSELF


The NHS delivers professional clinical services but these supplement what you do for yourself. it is the most important type of care and the second most important type of care is informal or voluntary care which is delivered by by friends, family and volunteers. you are probably giving informal care to someone else, as well as looking after yourself. We believe that everyone should have access to and be the owner of all the information about you and there are moves to do this but at present in too many parts of the country you could finish up with 

• a record on your GP's system
• a record on the hospital you have been treated at, hopefully just one record although you have been sat three different specialist services over the last few years
• a record at the big teaching hospital to which you were referred for super specialist care 

Now imagine you were on holiday in Tenerife or Kenya, or indeed visiting a relative in Middlesborough a long way from your home in Workington, and dropped down and became unconscious in the street. now you need to write down any information that you think would be useful to the Hospital to which you were taken by an ambulance summoned by a Good Samaritan 

• Long term or chronic conditions e.g. high blood pressureSignificant past health problems e.g. ' heart attack treated with a stent in 2014'
• Significant treatments or operations e.g. operation and chemotherapy for cancer of the uterus in 2013
• Prescribed medication 
• Name of GP and phone number of health centre 

​the first step is to ask at your health centre how you can get access to your health record