"Psych team problems"

Dear Anonymous

Thank you for your feedback on your experience of the Psychiatric Team. We are very sorry to hear about your expereience and apologise for the delay in acknowledging your comments. We would like to confirm that your feedback has been passed on to the department concerned.

If you would like to discuss the issues in person and confidentially please contact PALS at the Leeds Partnerships Foundation Trust on 0800 0525 790 or email pals.lypft@nhs.net.

Thank you once again for taking the time to post your comments.

Hi,

Firstly as the service manager of the Acute Liaison Psychiatry Service (the mental health nurses based in the Emergency Departments of LGI and St James’ hospitals) I’d like to apologise for the delay in responding to your post. Unfortunately it has only recently been brought to our attention by NHS Choices and Patient Opinion.

I was extremely sorry to read your feedback on your experience of hospitalisation following your attempted suicide. It was clearly a very difficult time for you and it sounds like in this instance you were let down by our services. I would have expected you to have been treated with respect and compassion and certainly not patronised or made to feel worse.

Your comments will be fed back to the team as important learning points; in particular the issues you raise about the attitude and behaviour of the Psychiatric nurse who assessed you.

In addition if you would like to make contact with our Patient Advice and Liaison Service they can discuss these unfortunate events with you. If you wish they can then contact me and I can thoroughly investigate the incident. PALS can be reached on 0800 0525790 or pals.lypft@nhs.net.

To go back to your experience, I am unclear why a mental health nurse was not able to see you earlier in your admission. We have, for the last 18 months, had mental health nurses based within the emergency department and they will, wherever possible, respond to a referral within 3 hours or less and carry out an assessment.

I fully appreciate this information does not alter the circumstances in which you found yourself, but again I would be more than willing to look into why your experience did not match our expected level of care.

I would also hope that this would provide reassurance to others reading this post, in that an assessment by a mental health professional should be accessible within a short space of time when attending one of the two big emergency departments in Leeds following an incident of self-harm.

Please let me close by once again apologising for your experience of our care in this instance. I sincerely hope things have improved for you since this difficult time and I wish you all the very best for the future.

Kind regards,

Kim Bunton

Clinical Services Manager

Leeds Liaison Psychiatry and Perinatal Services

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust