In my book, the main character has a puncture in his lung, and it causes it to collapse by a decent percentage (seventy to eighty), I researched that to find out that tall thin people have a risk of that happening, my question, or rather the first question was what complications might arise from an event like that? And secondly, would the hospital call his parents over that? Currently, the story takes place in England and the MC has a rough and rocky relationship with his parents and this would be a method to force them to interact, but I don't know very much about hospital procedure, nevermind hospital procedure in another country. The MC is 19 and attending college and he has them as his emergency contacts through the school. Would the hospital actually get those records from the college is also a question I have. So to sum up my questions if that was confusing: What complications would arise from lung collapse? Would the hospital get emergency contacts from the school because of the collapse? And is this something they would call the contacts over?
I'm not 100% sure, but here's what I think. Maybe someone else can clarify or add on. 1) One complication from a punctured lung (pneumothorax) is going into shock. This can be deadly if not treated. You'll need to go look up shock (there's different kinds, so you'll have to figure out which one your character would go through if you wanted him to go into shock) Then you'll need to look up what happens during that specific type of shock. I've also read that once you have a pneumothorax you're more likely to have another one than someone who hasn't ever had one. 2) If the incident happens on school grounds, the college might get involved. If the character is off school grounds or takes himself to the hospital, there's probably less of a chance the college will get involved. 3) I would think it depends on how serious the injury ends up being.
In the US (I realize this isn't the US) I think that the answer would depend on whether the patient, who at 19 is an adult is incapable of communicating and/or making decisions for himself. I believe that HIPAA would forbid contacting the emergency contacts if the patient could do those things. But I could be mistaken. For the UK, I'd probably start with medical privacy laws, to find out if they're actually forbidden to contact the parents.
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000087.htm This might help with the contacting questions... http://www.unsystemceb.org/
