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Hospital admission

Posted By Chara

"Hospital admission"

About: Craigavon Area Hospital / Emergency Department

(as a service user),

I attempted to take my own life. I was in ED for 3 days attached to a drip. I was offered no medication for anxiety and was left on a chair in the hallway. The mental health team were there to make an assessment and while they were good there was no dignity in sitting in a hallway with a drip on a chair riddled with anxiety and not wanting to be alive and wishing my attempt had worked. It was the hardest time of my life.

I was given no privacy to gather my thoughts and open to everyone walking past me. People who knew me stopped to talk and ask why I was there. No dignity. Complete humiliation and shame. 

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Responses

Response from Paul Smyth, Interim Head of Service Emergency Departments, Acute & Emergency Medicine, Southern Health and Social Care Trust 11 months ago
Paul Smyth
Interim Head of Service Emergency Departments, Acute & Emergency Medicine,
Southern Health and Social Care Trust

Submitted on 27/05/2023 at 15:23
Published on Care Opinion at 15:23

We do not have the specific details to comment on your case, there may have been a medical reason why you were not offered medication as it may have been contraindicated.

If you were sitting on a chair in the hall it sounds like there were no available cubicles for you. The clinical team would not want to treat people in corridors, they would prefer the privacy of a cubicle that you certainly should have been entitled to.

Once the emergency department has a significant number of bed waits, the department becomes overcrowded. There are no available cubicles to assess people attending and there are lengthy waiting times. It sounds like you should have been placed in an inpatient ward after initial treatment in ED and after the psychiatric team’s assessment.

We apologise you waited so long and had no privacy. The inpatient wards and the patient flow teams are trying some initiatives to improve the flow of patients out of the ED. We hope you are recovering well.

Kind regards

Paul Smyth

Head of ED

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