GP Stories - Maths brainteaser

Primary care is getting busier and busier post-covid, the floodgates of people waiting to see their doctors have been open and staff have been wiped out with sickness, not least more covid. There has been a bit less GP bashing in the media which is a change, though I'm sure its coming soon. The new GP contract states that there will be Saturday 9-5 opening from October onwards - though how this will be staff will be very interesting indeed. I imagine this may be contracted out, and locums will have a good time if they don't mind giving up a Saturday.

One afternoon on the urgent list, there was a request for a call back which was deemed urgent.

 "Blood abnormality - urgent, very anxious"

In reality, it would have been more appropriate to ask this patient to book in with their normal GP to get the results but it intrigued me so I called him up. This 59 year old man was worried about his blood tests. He had bloods to look for tiredness but they all looked normal. However he said, when he looked online at his patient access, he had seen a huge abnormality and it really kept him up all night when he saw it yesterday. He said he looked at the haematocrit (ratio of red blood cells in your blood) and it was too high. He said he saw the normal range of the haematocrit was zero point thirty seven (0.37) to zero point forty seven (0.47) but he saw that his haematocrit was zero point four hundred and thirty (0.430) on the system. 

I had to pause to consider that I work in quite a deprived area where education levels weren't that high and maths generally isn't people's strong suits. I was also aware though he was clearly intelligent enough to go online and find out his results, something many patients struggle with. I explained to him that 0.430 is equal to 0.43, though on the phone it is quite hard to explain it clearly so I hope he grasped that concept. Either way he seemed relieved that I told him the results were normal. 

Whilst I'm very much in favour of sharing the patient's information with themselves, I can see why this can cause undue anxiety amongst people. Thankfully he rang up before he got too worked up, but I can imagine some patient's would get very anxious and may do something silly. Maybe there should be a disclaimer warning before getting the results.