Dear LPG,

As we get older, there are no two ways about it, our health becomes something that we need to have checked and sorted more frequently, and while the NHS has all sorts of issues that seem to be passed on to us with the result that we are having to wait longer and live with a service far short of the one we were promised when we started to pay national insurance, we all seem to accept that the medical professionals have all the answers. 

GPs have a reputation for making us wait, both for the treatment we need and also to actually get an appointment, but what they offer at the end of a consultation is advice, so I asked google a couple of questions with that in mind. 

My question was…

When you finally get to see your health professional and they recommend a course of treatment, do you have to agree?

The interesting thing is that you do not.  To take an extreme example…  if you are advised that you need to have something amputated you do not have to agree. There are also many relatively minor instances that perhaps include where alternative choices of medication are recommended or an opportunity to see a specialist is being discouraged.   It is also the case that if you are advised that you should not have something done that you want done, you also can disagree and insist.  A friend of mine, who was suffering with the same problem in both knees, had successful surgery on one leg but then, because of another illness that she needed to get sorted first, two years went by before she could get the other done and when she then went back to the hospital they advised that she had become too old.  She interpreted that news into ‘the doctor said you are too old’ when telling that story, but her daughter went and asked again and she finally had the other operation that she wanted.  It went well but, of course had it not, I am sure that the patient would have been hearing the GP’s version of ‘I told you so…’ after the event.

The point is, from what I have learned online and for all their education and knowledge, a doctor or surgeon can only advise you as to what you should do. 

There may be two possible alternative ways forward; while your doctor can tell you which he thinks will be best for you, he cannot force you to agree to his choice.  The doctor’s advice is usually very informed but it is ADVICE and if you want to choose an alternative way to go, that doctor can refuse to treat you in the way you would prefer but he cannot go against your wishes unless it can be absolutely proved that you do not have the capacity to make that choice.

I think that that is something worth remembering…

WR, Bellingham

WR shares the information that inspired this message…

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