EXTREMELY long letter of doom regarding asthma meds!

[baratron]

Regarding this post, a letter to my GP about my asthma meds.

What I wanted to write:I am writing to complain about the way that various members of the practice have become obsessed with trying to reduce my asthma medication. I would like this letter to be formally added to my medical notes so that I no longer have to waste my valuable breath

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Looks okay to me, though I (regrettably) doubt it will get read all the way through. Thus, it might be worth making sure the key point of "we tried beclamethasone, and it stopped working" is obvious even to someone who skims it and reads the opening and closing paragraphs.

[baratron]

veryfineredwine suggested I think your final paragraph,"Thank you for your time..." could be more assertive. "You have been my GP for $num years, and you've helped get my asthma better controlled in that time, for which I am grateful. This recent change in medication is distressing. I'd like to see you to discuss more appropriate drugs....I understand both of your points, and they would definitely apply if I was posting the letter. However, I'm going to take the letter to a consultation with the doctor in question, where I will discuss it briefly and leave it for him to read properly outside of our pathetic 10 minute slot. I'd originally planned to drop it through the surgery letterbox (it's just down the road), but then my leg decided to start falling off, and I need to go & see them about that. There's something Wrong with my right hip, which has induced a problem in my right calf muscle, and it needs attention in case it's serious. It's been bad enough that I considered A&E except that, me being me and having had crap joints for years, I don't

[redbird]

I think it's okay, with one exception: given that it is a very long letter, you might want to make clear at or near the beginning that you object not only to their attempting to reduce your dose, but to their changing your prescription without any consultation. Otherwise, they may make a note "if she's on fluticasone dipropionate, it needs to be 200 micrograms twice a day" rather than "she needs fluticasone dipropionate, 200 micrograms twice a day."

[baratron]

Point taken. I was short of space because it's 4 pages already and I really didn't want to start a new page for a couple of sentences, but I've changed the wording of the beginning. It now reads:

I am writing to formally state my frustration regarding various members of the practice constantly trying to change my asthma medication. I would like this letter to be added to my medical notes so that I no longer have to repeat myself.

My asthma is good BECAUSE of the medication and dose that I'm on. 200 μg of Flixotide (fluticasone propionate) twice a day suits me very well, and is the minimum effective dose. This should be the end of the story, except it clearly isn't considering the number of times people have attempted to reduce the dose or change to a different drug over the past year.This change also gets rid of the informality about "the amount of hassle I've had", which is how I honestly feel but isn't the best possible wording. I knew the letter would need a certain amount of rewriting to be changed from my initial angry rant

[johnckirk]

Firstly, I think that's a good letter, with lots of useful information. However, there may be a couple of tweaks you can make.

Could you move the paragraph about your history ("on Becotide from 13 to 19") nearer to the start? They hopefully have this information in your records already, but if you're providing a summary then it might help to put other information in the right context. Also, reading through this letter, it sounds like a steady improvement, where the doctors have done everything right; echoing someone else's comment, maybe you should say explicitly that you've tried different medication recently (on their advice/prescription) and it's made things worse. Similarly, you might want to change "constantly" to "frequently", unless they're doing it every time you visit.

Regarding informality, could you reword "evilness of my joints"?

Being picky, in your final bullet point I'd change "occasional riding" to "occasionally ride", so that it matches the other bullet points.

Anyway, good luck with it all.

[kyte]

That was a very informative letter!

If it were me, though, I think what I'd do is write a short letter saying 'I am distressed at the repeated medication reviews where I am urged to reduce my medication... I believe this is the minimum effective dose...Please restrict such reviews to the minimum necessary'. Then attach two appendices - one list of identified triggers and one bullet point summary of your relevant medical history.

Oh and you might need to make it clear that school laboratories are somewhere you actually need to go!

[ailbhe]

This (appendices) is a tactic which worked for me when I was complaining about medical care and asserting my needs.

[hatter]

Looks good to me. It is long but it's not unnecessarily so, so I don't think that's a problem. As it should be on file in future, you can hopefully deflect discussion by refering them to it and explain you don't want to waste valuable consulation time discussing it, and suggest they schedule another appointment about this if they feel it necessary after reviewing it.

the hatter