If you developed cervical cancer after cervical screening you can request a 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 cervical screening experience
Who can ask for a review
You can only request a review if you have cervical cancer and both of these apply:
- you had cervical screening through CervicalCheck in the 10 years before your diagnosis
- you did not have a CervicalCheck review before - such as a CervicalCheck audit review or a Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) review
If you’re not sure when your last CervicalCheck cervical screening appointment before your diagnosis was, contact us.
Email: review.request@screeningservice.ie
Freephone: 1800 45 45 55
How to request a review
Contact us by email or post to ask for a review.
Email: review.request@screeningservice.ie
Post:
Client Services,
National Screening Service,
King’s Inns House,
200 Parnell St,
Dublin 1,
DO1 A3Y8
What to expect
After you ask for a review we will get in touch with you to let you know if you are eligible.
We will meet you before the review starts and at the end of the process.
There are 4 parts to the review:
- how we invited you to cervical screening
- your cervical screening results
- your colposcopy care
- your histology (biopsy) results
We will look at the parts that are relevant in your case and:
- compare your care against the quality assurance standards at the time
- tell you if there was anything we could have done differently
Someone to support you
You might need someone to support you during 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
You can get support and an advocate through the Patient Advocacy Service. It is free and fully independent.
Meeting with you
To fully understand your experience, we would like to speak to you directly as part of the review process.
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 can tell us about your cervical screening experience. We will also explain what to expect from the review process.
You will meet members of our team who specialise in cervical screening.
We may not be able to answer all of your questions until your review is complete. Knowing your questions will help us to explain what the review does and does not cover. It also helps us focus the review on what matters to you.
Review results meeting
In the second meeting, we will:
- go through the results of your review
- answer your questions
- tell you about support services
We will send you your review report within 5 days of the second meeting.
After you request a review
After we get your letter or email asking for a review, we will contact you.
Before your review starts
If you are eligible for a review we will:
- ask you to confirm your identity - to make sure we protect the privacy of people who use our services
- give you details for your point of contact - this is someone you can contact at any stage during the review
- ask you for your consent to access your relevant medical records
Consent for medical records
We need to access your relevant medical records to make sure we can do a review.
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 and nurses hold if they need to talk about the best way forward for a person's care
Hospitals hold your medical records. We need your consent to access them.
These are different to your National Screening Service records.
If we can do a review
Within 3 months of getting your consent we will contact you. We will tell you if your medical records confirm a diagnosis of cervical cancer and that we can do a review.
How we use your personal information
If we do not offer you a review
After we check your medical records we may decide not to offer you a review. This could be, for example, because your medical records show you do not have cervical cancer. We will write to you to tell you why.
Your personal cervical screening review
We will:
- 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.
- Do a review of your case and write a report - ideally within 12 months of your first meeting.
- 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 cervical screening history
In your personal cervical screening review we look at your cervical 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:
How we invited you to cervical screening
Your cervical screening results
Your colposcopy care
Your histology results
What happens when we look back at your slides
For every 100 CervicalCheck cytology (smear) slides reviewed, reviewers find:
- 95 are ‘satisfactory’ or ‘satisfactory within limitations’
- 5 are ‘unsatisfactory’
If your review result is 'unsatisfactory', this means your slide should have been read differently.
If this happens, our clinical review team will meet you and listen to your concerns. You can ask for as much detail you need to understand what happened.
You can explain:
- what matters to you
- things that are not clear to you
- what kind of support could help
It can help to prepare questions, take notes or bring someone with you to the meeting.
Reasons a slide should have been read differently
This can happen for a number of reasons:
- abnormal cells that look very similar to normal cells
- low numbers of abnormal cells mixed in with lots of normal cells
- human error
When looking at a cervical screening slide, a screener is looking for pre-cancerous cells.
They will usually decide on a grade of either:
- most likely normal
- most likely abnormal
It is rare for them to find obvious cancer cells on a slide. This is because most cervical screening slides do not have cancer cells.
Patient safety incident
We will let you know as part of your review results meeting if we find that there was a patient safety incident.
If we find during the review that there was a patient safety incident, we will:
- tell you about it
- examine what happened
- report it
We do this in line with the:
Impact of your personal cervical screening review on your care
The result of your review will not affect past or ongoing decisions made about your care.
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.