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Care Opinion

Waiting to see a Psychiatrist

Posted By homamzm94

"Waiting to see a Psychiatrist"

About: Community Partnerships Service

(as the patient),

I have been waiting to see a Psychiatrist

The hours turn to days turn to months.

My parents find the money for private session.

My hopes are raised, finally someone may be able to tell me what’s wrong. Why my head feels like some days it will burst

Some days I feel so fragile I feel I may disintegrate into nothingness like a shattered pane of glass. Sometimes it washes over me like a raging torrent.

But no. My appointment gets cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances and I am left wondering if I really matter, whether I really am just an unforeseen circumstance, whether this Dr who is supposed to know and see inside my head really does see me as another name to be crossed out of the diary. Do I matter? Even to those who are supposed to fix me.

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Responses

Response from St Andrew's Healthcare 2 years ago
We have made a change
St Andrew's Healthcare

Submitted on 18/05/2021 at 08:53
Published on Care Opinion at 09:29

Dear homamzm94,

Thank you very much for taking the time to share your story. We are acutely aware that our current shortage of psychiatrists has resulted in much longer waiting times than usual, but it is very important that we understand the impact of this on the people who are referred to our service. We are trying hard to recruit more psychiatrists so that we can reduce the waiting time back to 2 weeks from receiving the referral to first psychiatric appointment, but this process unfortunately takes a while to complete.

We are so sorry that after you were given an appointment, it was cancelled. We try to keep cancellations to a minimum but we will now share your story with all of our clinicians to make sure they understand the potential impact on our service users before they make any future cancellations.

As a result of your story, we are now planning to contact people on the waiting list more regularly in order to keep them informed and provide advice and signposting to other sources of support while they are waiting.

Thank you again for sharing your experience on Care Opinion. And I hope we are able to provide you with the care you need in future. However, please do not hesitate to let us know if there are any further problems.

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