Great Britain
Doctor’s office sends cancer diagnosis instead of Christmas greeting
“Diagnosis – Aggressive lung cancer with metastases”: Shortly before Christmas, a doctor’s office in northern England unnecessarily frightened a number of patients with this message – because it was accidentally sent instead of a Christmas greeting.
In the UK, patients at a doctor’s surgery received a cancer diagnosis in the Christmas mail instead of congratulations. (archive image)
As the newspaper “The Sun” reported on Thursday, numerous patients in a practice in Askern near Doncaster received the SMS with the cancer diagnosis immediately before the holidays. Shortly thereafter, another SMS followed with an apology: the diagnosis had been sent “by mistake”. “Our message to you should be: We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” wrote the practice, which initially did not comment on the case when asked.
Many of those affected reacted angrily. Carl Chegwin published a screenshot of the SMS on the online network Facebook and wrote: “Another big mistake by lousy doctors.” Another user wrote: “Everyone in Askern received this message!”
According to the “Sun”, among the recipients of the text message was 57-year-old Chris Reed, who was actually awaiting the results of a lung cancer test. Reed told the newspaper he immediately tried to call the practice, but the phone was always busy. So he went to the practice himself, where he learned that his tests were negative.
(SDA)