Miss F’s mother was terminally ill. Miss F is a registered nurse and she and her sister cared for their mother at home. One evening, the battery failed on the device which administered Miss F’s mother’s anti-sickness medication. Miss F did not want to leave her mother without medication while waiting for the district nurse to call, so she changed the battery herself and successfully restarted the device.

The next day, a district nurse told the family’s GP Practice about this. The Practice discussed the incident with Miss F and decided that the doctor-patient relationship with the family had broken down. The Practice asked the local primary care trust to remove all three family members from their patient list.

Miss F and her sister complained to the Practice about the removal decision, but were unhappy with the response. They asked the Ombudsman for help. Miss F said that, as a nurse, she knew her mother was dying and that she needed care around the clock. She was therefore very upset at spending precious time visiting the Practice, trying to persuade them to change their mind. She would rather have spent that time caring for her mother. Miss F also said the family’s removal from the list left their mother ‘totally distraught’ when she died just a few weeks later. She felt strongly that the Practice had let down her mother and was ‘totally devastated and distressed by our continual uncalled for treatment by professionals/GPs’.

Our investigation found that the Practice had given Miss F’s family no warning that they risked being removed; they did not communicate their concerns about the doctor-patient relationship properly; and failed to consider other courses of action. The Practice also took Miss F’s mother off their list even though she had not been involved in the disagreement. They did not consult her or give her any choice in the matter. All of that left Miss F and her sister having to find a new GP for the whole family at a hugely stressful time.

The Practice’s poor complaint handling compounded the family’s distress. For example, when Miss F and her sister pointed out that no warning had been given and questioned why their mother had been removed at such a critical time, the Practice said that they did not wish ‘to go into specific details’. This failure to answer reasonable questions unnecessarily drew out the complaints process.

The Practice apologised to Miss F and her sister for the distress and inconvenience they had caused. They also drew up plans setting out how they would avoid a recurrence of their failings.