Personal cervical screening review

If you developed cervical cancer after screening you can have a free personal cervical screening review.

A review may help you or your family if you:

• are looking for answers or ways to understand how and when your cancer developed
• want to ask questions about your screening journey

What to expect

We will meet you before the review starts and at the end of the process.

During the review we will look at:

• how we invited you to screening
• your screening test results
• your colposcopy care
• your histology (biopsy) results

We will:

• compare your care against the quality assurance standards at the time
• tell you if there was anything we could have done differently

Meeting with you

We need to speak to you directly as part of the review process.

You can choose to meet us in person or online. We will accommodate your needs as much as possible. For example, when and where we meet or if you need to change the meeting time, date or location.

We recommend you bring a friend or family member with you to these meetings for support.

Introductory meeting

In the first meeting, you'll tell us about your screening experience. We will also take you through what to expect from the review process.

You will meet members of our team who specialise in screening.

We may not be able to answer all of your questions until your review is complete. Knowing your questions will help us to focus the review on what matters to you.

If you are not available to meet

We cannot start the review until you are ready to meet us.

But you can still request access to your cervical screening records or CervicalCheck screening test slides for independent review.

Accessing records

Review results meeting

In the second meeting, we will:

• go through the results of your review and final report
• answer your questions
• go through the next steps
• give you your report to take home

Someone to support you

You might need extra support to help you through the review.

This could be:

• a member of your family
• a close friend
• a carer
• an independent advocate

Choose someone who:

• you are comfortable with and can talk to easily
• can come with you to meetings, if needed
• we can share your personal information with

Your support person or advocate can be your point of contact with us if you want. You will need to give us your consent and their contact details.

Even if they are your point of contact we will still need to meet you. This is because the review is about your personal experience.

Patient Advocacy Service

You can get support and an advocate through the Patient Advocacy Service. It is free and fully independent.

Who can ask for a review

To request a review, you must have:

• had a cervical cancer diagnosis
• and had a CervicalCheck screening test in the 10 years before your diagnosis

If you’re not sure when your last CervicalCheck screening test before your diagnosis was, email review.request@screeningservice.ie or Freephone 1800 45 45 55.

We will not be able to offer you a review if you have:

• not developed cervical cancer
• had a previous review related to the CervicalCheck programme, for example, a CervicalCheck clinical audit or Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) review

A review of someone else's screening history

You may ask for a review on behalf of someone else, for example, a family member.

You will need to send us proof that you have the right to request information on their behalf.

We will contact you to let you know what information we need.

If you are a family member requesting a review, we need to speak to you directly as part of the review process. If you are not available to meet us, we cannot start the review.

How to request a review

To ask for a review, contact us by email or post. You must include a copy of your government-issued photo ID, such as your:

• passport
• driver’s licence

Contact

review.request@screeningservice.ie

National Screening Service, King’s Inns House, 200 Parnell St, Freepost FDN7612, Dublin 1, D01 A3Y8

After you request a review

After we get your letter or email asking for a review, we will contact you.

Consent for medical records

Hospitals hold your medical records. We need your consent to access them.

We need to look at your medical records to make sure we have the relevant information to go ahead with your request for a review.

These are different to your National Screening Service records.

Your medical records

Your medical records include:

• colposcopy notes - these are notes the doctors and nurses made if you attended colposcopy
• histology (biopsy) records - these include samples taken from your cervix and reports on these samples if you attended colposcopy
• notes from multidisciplinary team meetings - meetings doctors held if they met to talk about the best way forward for your case.

Within 3 months of receiving your permission we will write to you to let you know if your records show that we can do a review.

How we use your personal information

If we cannot do a review

If your medical records show a reason why we cannot do a review, we will write to you to tell you why.

Your personal cervical screening review

We do reviews starting with those who have been waiting longest.

We will:

1. Let you know we are starting the review and invite you to an introductory meeting - ideally within 3 months of getting your permission to look at your medical records.
2. Do a review of your case and write a report - ideally within 12 months of your first meeting.
3. Meet you to give you your report and discuss it with you - ideally within 3 months of completing your review.

If there is a delay we will let you know.

Report on your screening history

In your personal cervical screening review we look at your screening history to see if there is anything we could have done differently.

We will write a report as part of the review.

It will say if your care was satisfactory, satisfactory within limitations or unsatisfactory in these 4 areas:

What happens when we look back at your slides

We know what to expect from reviews done by other countries.

For every 100 screening slides taken from women who have developed cervical cancer we can expect to find about:

• 60 of the slides will have a review result that is ‘satisfactory’
• 35 will have a result of ‘satisfactory within limitations’
• 5 will have a result of ‘unsatisfactory’

If your slide should have been read differently

For every 100 slides reviewed, we expect to find that around 5 slides should have been read differently.

This means that a small number of women will be told that an error was made in the reading of their slide.

This can be devastating news to hear.

When this happens our clinical review team will listen to and respond to all your questions. We will talk to you about your concerns.

Patient safety incident

If we find during the review that there was a patient safety incident, we will:

• examine what happened
• report it
• let you know as part of your review results meeting

We do this in line with the HSE Incident Management Framework and the HSE Open Disclosure Policy.

If a report says your care was 'unsatisfactory' it does not mean it is a patient safety incident.

Impact of your screening review on your care

The report will not have an effect on your current care.

Your doctor will not make different decisions based on the result of your review.

You may have questions about whether your care would have been different if a different result was given in the past. We will do our best to answer any questions you have in an open and transparent way.

Share your experience with us

We welcome your feedback throughout the review process.

We want to hear about what:

• is working
• we could improve
• is not working

At the end of the review, we will also ask you to complete a short questionnaire. This will help us to continually improve our review process.