PARA's med fail

[MiniCheddars]

Hello, I was hoping to get a bit of advice. As the title suggests I received a letter today explaining i've failed the British Army medical due to having Rhabdomyolysis, which I had in 2013. 5 years ago. I haven't had it since or prior to the one off incident in 2013 and it states so on the letter the medical team sent me. The strangest part is prior to attempting to join the Para's I had my goals set at becoming a Royal Marine. I passed the Royal Navy medical without issue in 2016/17 (not completely sure on the actual year) and went on to pass the PJFT without issue then stopped my application because I decided to go travelling. Basically wondering if I attempted to appeal this how would I go about it? and is there any chance of actually attaining a pass?

Sorry for the lengthy thread. Cheers.

 

[Ninja_Stoker]

Whilst no expert on medical issues, nor qualified to offer medical advice, common sense suggests that possibly your RN medical revealed no lasting effects from your condition but the tests conducted during the Army medical showed evidence of abnormal results.

Equally, Doctors are humans and can make mistakes. Possibly it was not declared previously or completely missed, in error.

There are two other possibilities: One is the human element in which one doctor may not appreciate the significance of the condition or may err on the side of caution. The other is the fact that whilst the standards are broadly tri-service, some conditions can have single service standards applied.

If the condition is an outright bar to entry, then unfortunately an appeal will be pointless. However, if it is not an outright bar to entry and medical suitability is determined by the degree in which it still affects you then you need to gain medical evidence of a clean bill of health without recurrence or relapse.

Assuming it was declared and checked OK during the RN medical examination, it maybe worth obtaining a copy of the medical notes by submitting a Subject Access Request form....but, if more than twelve months have elapsed since the RN medical examination then there's a strong possibility your records will have been shredded under Data Protection legislation unfortunately.

Again, I don't know how the Army medical appeal process works but it maybe worth writing a letter to the sender of your medical rejection letter to ask under what circumstances you could in future meet the medical standards for entry.

 

[MiniCheddars]

Thank you for you're reply and for the advice. I'll start making moves towards appealing this Monday. I had the idea of obtaining my Navy medical records and showing evidence of having ran marathon's etc as well as having blood tests done by my local GP. Hopefully I can get the outcome I'm after.
Cheers.