Advice please :-)

General
1

Good afternoon all!
I am a district nurse and currently looking for some advice from people who have been in the same position as one of my patients!

He had a seizure 30th March 2020. Hadn’t had a seizure for 4 years but stopped taking a key medication. Prior to this seizure he could drive and when he had seizures before he would be able to drive almost instantly 1 year from fitting.
However, he sent off his driving license application 8 weeks ago as advised and 4 days ago received a letter from DVLA stating that he has to have a medical assessment from his GP.
Does anyone know what this medical assessment consists of?

The patient has since been offered a new job in car sales and they have said it is critical that he can drive. He has been honest, explained the situation to them and the car company HR dept have basically advised management to retract the offer!! (Equality act 2010 comes to mind).

Anyway, the patient has now been informed he cannot get a GP appt for 4-6 weeks for this “medical” which we are unsure of what it is called. I have tried to research but mostly comes up with D4 medicals for HGV/bus drivers etc so assume that’s a different medical.

Has anyone else experienced this? If so what is the assessment called?
Can you pay privately to have the medical assessment?

As you can imagine his mental health is at rock bottom and he will be potentially jobless from his old job in 1 week as he handed his notice in so things could decline.

Thank you in advance

Hattie.

2

Hi,
When I had to reapply for my driving licence, I placed the name of my epilepsy consultant on the form and the DVLA were then able to contact them directly to confirm that I had been seizure free. I found this an easier way than waiting to speak to the GP! Hope this helps:)

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Hi there

I don’t know about re-applying for a driving licence as my son has only just (at the agree of 22) been seizure free for long enough to apply for his.

He declared his condition on the application form and they sent him a medical self assessment form which he completed and sent back - I think that he had to give the contact details of his neurologist (so the specialist rather than his GP).

The specialist completed the form and returned it. This seemed to be the only sort of “medical assessment” that was needed. He received the licence through the post a couple of weeks ago.

I think that this is the page on the Gov.uk website that might be able to clarify things for you/your patient Reapply for a driving licence following a medical condition - GOV.UK

Also you can phone the DVLA for help with this sort of thing - you can find the number you need by following this link Contact DVLA - GOV.UK

Hope he gets everything sorted soon.