"Rampton Hospital Womens Services takes on the Feedback Challenge"

The Involvement Team Visited Rampton Hospital to talk to patients and gather feedback about what it is like to be admitted to Rampton Hospital. As part of the Patient Feedback Challenge project, Rampton staff and the Involvement team want to make sure that patients have a chance to feedback what they feel about this process and to make improvements based on what patients say.

We asked a question about ''what you didn’t get on admission but would have found helpful? ''

One patient chose to tell us how Rampton had made a difference to her life.

This has been posted on her behalf.

''Being here quite some time now I can honestly say that coming here was the best thing that has ever happened to me and I wish it had happened sooner so that I wouldn’t still be here now and then I might not have done the things that bring shame to me. There are lots of things that have helped me progress. Firstly people didn’t give up on me. No matter how hard I tried to push people away they still came back. It took a long time for me to realise that I could still laugh, and even longer to realise that I could still care for others. But before I could do that I have had to learn to care for myself. And now I can honestly say I am working really hard at finding positive and compassionate thoughts for myself while continuing to build up maintain my therapeutic and friendly relationships.

One of the things that has helped me to achieve some of these things is the therapy that has been available to us such as DBT * a therapy that works around your main problems which help you to recognise where you went wrong and how to put things right. And having areas to work in where you can look after animals and tend to gardens is another daily task which I am learning, and also cooking. It’s not something I’ve been able to do. And most people take these things for granted. I have learnt to respect and appreciate more of the daily things that I have taken for granted. Especially now I haven’t got half of what I had. Some of the other great qualities of being here that not many other hospitals provide is workshops to help you learn new things and with these workshops it helps with distraction techniques and in finding this kind of thing helps you soon realise that finding your own distraction technique would be very beneficial in building a more stronger and positive future. Now I am able to do more things for myself I am able to do more things for others which also gives me another sense of satisfaction knowing that I have done an ARK (act of random kindness). This is something I learnt in a recovery group. I am now being nice to myself and being nice to others which has turned in to a better person, and I have all the thanks and appreciation to Rampton for helping me. My care team have also helped me to build a closer relationship with my family. Something I thought I had destroyed forever. ''

* Note: Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is a form of psychotherapy