SOUND BITES

Sour notes

A teenage patient recently made a formal request to read her casenotes, a demand which now has legal force. In the event all went well: the notes were full and frank but, she agreed, were clear and largely accurate. We probably ended up with a more open relationship than before, but it made me think again about medical records.

Working in the Scottish Hospital Advisory Service, which visits all NHS services for psychiatric, geriatric, mentally handicapped, and younger physically disabled patients, I was upset by the overall standard of record keeping. I tried to foster the notion that medical casenotes should enable …