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Mental health care appalling

Story from nhs.uk

"Mental health care appalling"

About: Croydon University Hospital / Accident and emergency

I came in with a family member who was relapsing with bipolar disorder. We had a referral from the GP who had spoke to psych liaison beforehand and we were told we would be seen fairly quickly due to the deteriorating relapse. We checked in at 1930 and were not seen by psych until 2300 (during which time, the relapse was getting worse and worse). The psych teams have no infrastructure and lack basic rooms to hold these conversations and the environment was simply toxic, even for a person that is fit and well! The psych team were good but Were limited with how much they could do due to a lack of resource.

We ended up leaving the hospital at 2am and were rold to return in the morning to get a bed at a psychiatric hospital. We came back the next day at 9.30am as requested and were there all day with no bed being available and psych only coming to see us at 5pm !! We ended up leaving at 1930 again as the environment is toxic and could worsen the relapse. We have since attempted to secure a private bed and have had no luck. We are at home with an unwell mental health patient and nowhere to go. It is a sad sad state of the NHS and I can’t imagine how many people are suffering as a result.

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Responses

Response from Sarah Pritchard, Senior Quality Lead, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust 5 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Sarah Pritchard
Senior Quality Lead,
Croydon Health Services NHS Trust

Submitted on 13/11/2018 at 14:49
Published on Care Opinion at 15:36

Unfortunately, Liaison service do not accept direct referrals from GPs. GPs are able to call liaison to provide a ‘heads up’ detail of patients they are sending to A&E. GPs are advised to always inform the patient and their family that giving a ‘heads up’ is not a referral and is certainly not a guarantee that the patient will be seen immediately. The patient has to book into A&E, have A&E triage and following triage, a referral to liaison is then made. Although Liaison has a 1 hour response target, this is dependent on the number of mental health patients already in the department and already referred to the Liaison team.

Currently, the Liaison team only have 1 SLaM room provided for assessing mental health patients. When the team have cluster referrals, it means there is not enough private space to assess patients. This will improve when the new A&E opens later this year, as it will provide 2 interview rooms.

SLaM bed pressure is an on–going issue. As soon as a decision to admit a patient is made, the Liaison team contacts SLaM bed management. Liaison has no power to expedite bed allocation due to bed management being covered by another service within SLaM.

I apologise on behalf of SLaM, and am sorry that the family had to attempt to seek a private sector bed. I am happy to be contacted by family via email, julie.odele@slam.nhs.uk – if I have the patient’s details I can arrange support in the community or signpost to appropriate service.

Julie Odele, interim Clinical Service Lead, Croydon Liaison Services

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