Television actor Kenneth Cope, 78, has been banned from his GP surgery after lodging a complaint about a cancer misdiagnosis that led him to believe he was suffering from terminal lung cancer.

The Daily Mail reports that the actor was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2000 – but doctors discovered this had been a mistake in 2003. However, in a further blunder, Mr Cope was not given the all-clear by his GP surgery for another three years and carried on believing that he was suffering from a disease that would eventually kill him. He only found out about the misdiagnosis when he demanded to see his medical files and discovered a letter written to the surgery in 2003 by a specialist doctor who had examined him and given him the all-clear from cancer.

The ‘Coronation Street’ actor told the Daily Mail:

'I spent six years of my life wrongly believing I had cancer, literally under a false death sentence because of a wrong diagnosis. Then I found that my GP had been told years earlier that I'd never had cancer – but he didn't bother, or forgot, to tell me.’

Mr Cope went to see his GP, Dr John Searson, at the Norwood Surgery in Southport, Merseyside, hoping he would apologise for the mistake.

However, the actor claims he was ‘fobbed off’ – and alleges he was denied counselling for the misdiagnosis of asbestos-related lung cancer.

His GP has now retired and did not even log his own misdiagnosis in his notes, says Mr Cope, who was accused of ‘verbal abuse’ towards the practice manager of the surgery when he requested a formal apology.

'I don't want compensation, but I do want them to admit their mistakes and to learn from them,’ said Mr Cope. 'I want action to ensure that hospital patients are kept properly informed of what is happening with their case.

‘The NHS is a wonderful organisation, but some of its staff seem to believe that it's run for their benefit and not that of the patients,’ he added.

The practice, however, struck him off as a patient, citing verbal abuse as the reason. Mr Cope denied being abusive to any of the staff at the surgery and says the accusation is being used as an excuse against him.

He has enlisted the help of his MP, Dr John Pugh, in his fight for an apology – Dr Pugh is to raise his case with Sefton Primary Care NHS Trust.

The trust has declined to comment on the matter and no one was available to comment at the Norwood Surgery, according to the Daily Mail report.

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