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"Confidentiality, communication and confidence"

About: The Royal Victoria Infirmary / General medicine

(as the patient),

I used to go here for HIV treatment and I have to say the assumptions made about my 'lifestyle' bordered on offensive. They were certainly unprofessional and not tactfully put.

I've had one sexual partner for the last 6 years after being tested negative previously. Yet despite this I was left feeling as if I had been put on trial.

To top that off they referred my case to community care nurse without my consent.

Fine at dishing out pills and judgement- hopeless at sensitivity and dignity. Stunningly effective performance at dodging questions. I'm not the only one having spoken to a support group- a few patients have been sending out leaflets about this sort of thing for a few months.

Shoddy, out of touch and out of control.

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Responses

Response from The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Thank you for taking the time to post your feedback on Patient Opinion. The Trust takes the issue of patient confidentiality very seriously and has policies in place to ensure it meets its obligations in this respect to protect the confidentiality of its patients at all times. If any concerns were to be raised, please be assured that they would be fully investigated and addressed.

Update posted by AshleyV (the patient)

Does sending files to.community care with all my details "fit in" with your policy even though I didn't want to speak to them and made it known? Your organisation decided to ignore my wishes and because ignoring wishes is within your policy no complaint was looked at. Thanks for that.

How can you write: if any concerns were to be raised they'd be handled? I wrote a complaint and was told by one of the doctors that it's his department and his decision to make. In my opinion your organisation needs to take notice of the apparent number of people who are sick of complaining and seemingly being ignored. I said I didn't want to be treated there because of the attitudes and now have to travel to Durham because nothing was done.

Response from The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Dear AshleyV,

We are sorry to note that you remain dissatisfied with the level of service provided by The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation. Rather than enter into a discussion on a public website, perhaps you would prefer to contact our Patient Relations Team on 0191 223 1382 who will be able to look into your concerns in further detail and provide a detailed response to you.

Update posted by AshleyV (the patient)

thanks, but I don't want to engage with Newcastle any more. The complaint policy either doesn't work or it is ignored. I don't expect the earth or gushing niceness from the department head Just neutral would have done. This had gone on for months. The reason I have posted is to encourage people not to dropout from treatment but go somewhere else instead of Newcastle- not really to chat to Newcastle trust anymore. You can't simply fix this sort of thing.