Getting referred to the Neurology department

Your child’s hospital or community paediatrician should make the referral. 

We are unable to accept referrals from GPs.

If you feel a referral is appropriate and has not been suggested, you should contact your child’s paediatrician. We do not accept referrals directly from your child’s GP and require your child’s local paediatrician to make a referral to us.

As a tertiary care hospital, all children who attend GOSH must be referred via local hospital consultants, community paediatricians or paediatric neurologists. We do not accept referrals from GPs.

To make a referral to the Neurology department, please send your referral letter by email to:

gos-tr.neuro-referrals@nhs.net (This email is to be used by your doctor and their team to make a referral).

Alternatively please write to:

Department of Paediatric Neurology
Level 10, Main Nurses Building
Great Ormond Street Hospital
Great Ormond Street
London
WC1N 3JH

This may take longer to process than emails.

These will be discussed in conjunction with local paediatric services and GOSH. In certain cases, urgent cases are seen on the Rapid Assessment Neurology Unit (RANU) on Possum Ward.

This is not suitable for every case. Children are seen as a day case on RANU, and this service is specifically for children undergoing programmed investigations.

For acute referrals please see the guidance below.

To process a referral to the Paediatric Neurology Department at GOSH, we require the following minimum information:

• name and details of patient including NHS number (if applicable), current GP and lead consultant
• 18-week pathway information including date referral decision made
• whether an interpreter for the child or family is required
• please include, if relevant, details about social services involvement and parental responsibility

• reason for referral such as diagnostic, prognostic, second opinion or other
• details of previous neurology opinions, including previous clinic letters
• referral letter with current information and the referral questions

Referrals cannot be processed fully unless imaging (by IEP) and other relevant investigations have been received. Therefore, please include:

• MRI or CT
• EEG or EMG
• blood tests and any other assessments

If images are not available via IEP, please arrange for images to be transferred by either CD or secure transfer.

If you know the consultant the patient is under then please call their Medical PA or named Clinical Nurse Specialist via the hospital switchboard on 020 7405 9200.

Urgent queries are dealt with by the on call team, not by a patient’s named consultant.

For urgent referrals please call the switchboard on 020 7405 9200 and request the neurology on-call team. Referrals must be discussed at consultant to consultant level only.

Please complete the clinical query form above. The on-call team will then triage based on the content of the written referral. They will aim to call back on the same day, however on some days due to service pressures, they may call back the following day if they deem it can wait. They will always call back by next working day.

If you have a time window that you require a reply by please flag it when you send the form by email to gos-tr.neuro-referrals@nhs.net.

If your query requires immediate attention, please consider direct Paediatric Consultant to Neurology Consultant call via GOSH switchboard 0207 405 9200, or request Neurology on-call team (in working hours you will be put through to Neurology admin who will connect you to on-call doctor, out of hours you will be connected to SpR on-call).

Please note we will only review brain orspine scans in patients being considered for transfer to GOSH. For a radiology opinion, scans should be sent to the Radiology department via IEP accompanied by a formal referral letter.

For non urgent referrals please email a referral letter with the relevant clinical details and clinical question to gos-tr.neuro-referrals@nhs.net. Please follow outpatient instructions above.

Please do not do this if you have a question that requires attention within a short time frame.

All general feedback and suggestions can be directed to:

Kolchum Begum
Assistant Service Manager for Neurology, Epilepsy, Neurophysiology
Telephone number: 020 7405 9200 ext. 5517