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Care Opinion

The service I have received over the past two years

Posted By Jupiter6292

"The service I have received over the past two years"

About: Sexual Health Services - North Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent (Open Clinic)

(as a service user),

Right before the pandemic started, I was diagnosed with genital herpes. I am used to the walk in centre and long wait times, but it is absolutely at its worse now, 2 years on. The insane waiting list, the hectic scheduling of appointments, the lack of empathy. It’s terrible. Living with an STD is hard enough, and it makes it even harder having to use a service like the cobridge clinic.

I must add that all the staff, nurses and doctors I have seen over the years have been absolutely amazing. So the below recommendations are not for those that work there, but simply for those higher up that run the service.

I think the service can be improved in lots of ways to make it more inclusive in these emergency situations, especially for people living with STIs/STDs.

1) I think the service would benefit from an online booking system like GPS have. It can be embarrassing talking to the receptionist about intimate things, 95% of the time they don’t know why I am asking for more medication. It can be really challenging. Having an online booking system would also reduce the concerns raised in points 2, 3, 4 and 5

2) I wish the phone line would tell me the number I am in the queue. This would make it a lot easier for me to go about my day, and will give me a rough time that I will be waiting on the phone. There have been times where I have waited 90 minutes for this.

3) I wish I was able to choose an appointment time. It is so inconvenient having to wait by my phone for an unknowing amount of time. I wish I could choose to have an appointment at 10.15, or 15.30. But no, I can’t. You also cannot book appointments in advance, so then I am stuck with the phone line waiting.

4) If the above was not possible, I wish my appointment time could be more detailed. I am either given the option of 9-12, 12-4 or 4-6. I work full time for the NHS and these long slots are not useful or helpful. It also means I can’t plan my day. Even being scheduled a 60-90 minute time frame would improve this service greatly

5) Though likely not possible, I wish I could request a repeat prescription. Every three months I have to wait on the phone, be triaged and then expect a call back. It then takes on average 3 days for my prescription to be ready, which in an emergent situation like an outbreak, is not useful. Maybe it is possible to have an email address, where patients who have repeat medications can email the prescription request in advance? Then this can be signed off as needed

6) You seriously need to open the walk in centre. I don’t think any more clarification is required for this.

7) if you miss a phone call during the time slot allocated, no one leaves a message. You then have to go through the whole process again of being triaged and await the next best appointment, which could be a few days on. I think what nurses and doctors should do is leave a voice Mail, and state they will call back at the end of the day. It’s simply not fair that you expect people, who likely have jobs/own affairs to attend to, to wait by their phone for four hours, miss a call and go through it all again. It can be quite traumatic if I am honest.

Even matching none of these outcomes would improve the service. I know I am likely going to be using this throughout the rest of my adulthood, and at the moment in my opinion it is absolutely dire.

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Responses

Response from Julia Barraclough, Service Manager, North Staffordshire & Stoke on Trent Sexual Health & HIV Service, MPFT 2 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Julia Barraclough
Service Manager, North Staffordshire & Stoke on Trent Sexual Health & HIV Service,
MPFT

Submitted on 02/03/2022 at 12:28
Published on Care Opinion at 13:47

picture of Julia Barraclough

Dear Jupiter6292

Thank you for taking the time to provide feedback on our service and I really do appreciate the level of detail you have given around the issues you have faced over the past 2 years with accessing our service. It is good to hear about how well the nurses and doctors have treated you but would like to apologise for the difficulties you have in accessing our service. Your points are really well made and comments like these are really valuable in understanding how we can improve our service. I am going to respond to each of your points below:

1. We are in the process of developing online booking that our patients can access. This make take 6-12 months to be fully effective but I agree completely that this will significantly improve service access and in particular improve the telephone service that we currently provide.

2. We have immediate plans to upgrade our telephone system and we hope that this will be fully operational by early May at the latest. This will include patients knowing where they are in the queue and/or how long the predicted wait could be. This feedback is unfortunately something that many of our patients have commented on and we are committed to making changes as soon as possible.

3. Once online booking is available, you will be able to choose an appointment time. In the meantime, we are looking at ways of giving our patients more choice and definitely improving the telephone consultation service we provide.

4. As with point 3, we understand that some of our patients, especially those who work and/or have a family, require more flexibility and choice with appointments. I will take your comments on board to look at ways of improving this in the future.

5. We are unable to facilitate repeat prescriptions because our clinical team are required to check the medical history of all our patients before any further medication is issued. However, we are developing an electronic prescribing system whereby a prescription can be automatically sent to a patient's nearest pharmacy on the same day, thereby improving the access to repeat medication. The anticipated timeframe for this is within the next 6-12 months.

6. We have no plans at present to re-introduce the walk in clinics. Following the covid pandemic, we are still required to followed NHS national guidance on maintaining social distancing in clinic settings, which we are not able to achieve in a walk in clinic. I appreciate the walk in clinics had benefits as well as drawbacks when waiting times were high. There is a very high demand for our services and this can be difficult to manage at times. Many of our patients have commented on how they prefer the telephone consultation over the walk in clinics but I understand the walk in clinics did give some of our patients the flexibility of service they needed. Should social distancing recommendations in clinical settings be removed in the future, we will consider reintroducing walk in clinics.

7. As with the points I have commented on above, there are clearly improvements we can make to how our telephone consultations are run and I will take your comments back to the team. We are operating in a similar way to many other clinical services and due to the high demand for the service looking at ways to ensure our patients can access our service as flexibly as possible.

I hope I have answered your comments reasonably satisfactorily, but would be more than willing to discuss this with you further if you would like to get in touch with me.

Kind regards.

Julia Barraclough, Service Manager - juliac.barraclough@mpft.nhs.uk

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