Ashdown Forest Health Centre 2016-10-28 Person 3 5 0

On Monday 26th September we took our 14 year old daughter (a keen dancer) to the surgery with a sprained ankle which had resulted in a swollen and bruised area on the top of her foot. Dr Baxter explained that the bruising was a consequence of twisting the ankle and diagnosed a minor sprain and advised a week without dancing. However he did not touch or examine her foot or assess pain levels etc. We think that this is the minimum that should be done when a patient comes to the surgery with a sprain to assess how badly ligaments are damaged or if there is a possibility of a fracture. On Saturday 1st October as the ankle was still painful we took our daughter to Nick Tuckley an osteopath in Forest Row who said he though the ankle might be fractured and he advised an X-ray. On Monday 3rd October we went back to the surgery and saw Dr Mannion. She was excellent and gave the ankle a thorough examination. Although she did not think it was fractured she sent us immediately to have an x ray at the Queen Victoria East Grinstead. On Friday 7th October we received a call from a duty doctor who was quite embarrassed to tell me that the ankle was in fact fractured and said that we should have been told much earlier in the week and that now it was urgent that come to the surgery and then immediately take my daughter to a fracture clinic. At the clinic we were told to go to Brighton Children's hospital. We did this but after a very long wait in the fracture clinic we were told that they did not have the x ray and could only put the ankle in a boot and that we would have to come back the following Tuesday. This we did and a stable fracture was diagnosed and the boot retained. We think that the hospital or surgery should have communicated the results of the x ray to us earlier and we think that, for a stable fracture we could have been sent to a more local hospital, the Queen Victoria or Princess Royal Haywards Heath. The initial incorrect diagnosis because of no physical examination of the foot compounded by the delay in receiving the result of the x ray meant that my daughter was walking on a broken ankle for two weeks. This may have added to her recovery time and was also unnecessarily painful.