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On call doctor and home treatment team

Posted By serenastar

"On call doctor and home treatment team"

About: Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust / Crisis resolution NHS 111

(as a service user),

I have suffered from depression for 5 years and have been receiving support once a week, however I feel that this is not enough as I do not have any support at any other time and it has led to numerous distressing events.

At my last crisis I rang the non-emergency number as I did not feel I could go to A&E and feel safe due to previous experiences. They assessed me and got the on call doctor to ring me. The on call doctor told me to go to my GP and there was nothing more they could do, and despite attempting to explain that I need some support right at this moment the on call doctor stated that this was just going to go round in circles and there was nothing they could do for me and hung up.

Obviously this distressed me greatly and I rang the non-emergency number back as I was now incredibly upset and had spoken to a lovely nurse prior to the doctor. I rang back and ended up speaking to another kind nurse, who really tried to help and rang the Home Treatment Team for me. She then told me that they had looked at my records and that I was receiving all the support I would be offered in the area, despite this being once a week and told me to ring my Psychotherapist the next day. This frustrated me greatly as I had explained that I needed support then and there and did not want to escalate the situation by going to A&E. I then spoke to the incredibly patient nurse who understood my frustration, but explained there was nothing more she could do for me which at this point I was aware.

I was then left feeling extremely upset and as I live on my own, there was no one I could turn to or talk to. Throughout all of this I felt completely and utterly alone, and felt like no one cared about me and that I was never going to get better because services just refuse to see me (this has happened in the past also). I managed to get a hold of my friend who came and sat with me through the night, but this was obviously extremely distressing for them.

I feel like services are lacking completely, and I feel at a complete loss as to what to do or where to go from here in terms of accessing support.

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Responses

Response from Leeds and York NHS Partnership NHS Foundation Trust 10 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Leeds and York NHS Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 06/09/2013 at 15:52
Published on Care Opinion on 09/09/2013 at 09:29

Dear serenastar,

Firstly please let me apologise for the length of time we have taken to respond to your posting. We have had managers on sick leave and annual leave, and wanted to wait until there was an appropriate senior manager from the service to reply to you.

Nevertheless I’d like to thank you very much for taking the time to share your experiences here on Patient Opinion.

It sounds as though you had an extremely difficult time accessing support at a time when you really needed it. From your posting, you were referred between several services which must have been frustrating, distressing and unhelpful at what was already a difficult time for you.

We are very, very sorry about this and obviously it is not what we would have wanted you to experience at all.

I think there is clearly a need for a crisis plan to better support you in these situations. To see if we could help with this, we would like to know more about your individual circumstances, if you’d be willing to speak to us?

The best way to get in touch is via our PALS (Patient Advice & Liaison Service) on 0800 0525790 or pals.lypft@nhs.net. Hopefully as well as helping you, it will assist us in knowing how we could have better responded to your needs.

Although we recognise that this will not alter your past experience, we are currently redesigning the way people access mental health services in York, and we hope that the new system will reduce waiting times and help people to access the right service more quickly.

We look forward to hearing from you should you decide to get in touch, and I do really hope that things have improved for you since your posting.

Yours sincerely,

Caroline Brown

Clinical Team Lead

Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

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