"Adult Mental Heath Outpatients Service"

Thank you for the positive feedback regarding the Community Mental Health Team nurse you have been seeing and the Crisis Team and the help you are receiving in your recovery. We also value the comments made in respect of your contact with the Doctors in the team as well as parking at Alderney Hospital. The Trust is grateful you have taken the time to feedback your experiences. We are sorry to read that your experience has been compromised by the constant change of doctors and that you feel you are not listened to during appointments. You also mention often seeing a “trainee” doctor. The CMHT have “associate specialist” or “staff grade” doctors who you may have seen, who are trained in psychiatry and are supervised by the consultant. Some of these doctors do rotate which teams they work in as part of their work. We can see how this can be frustrating for a person trying to work on their recovery. Working in different teams is an important part of training for staff grade doctors and I am sorry if this has had a negative impact on you. If you feel that you would like to work with one doctor, perhaps you could discuss this with your nurse to see if this would be possible in the future. During your time with your doctor, the expectation is that you feel listened to, have time to work on your individual goals to help your recovery and that the Doctor works in partnership with you. We would like you to increasingly be able to take control of your own care and treatment; we call this being client-led. We are sorry that you feel you have not been listened to when you see a Doctor. We have shared your comments with the Doctors working in the team to reflect on the feedback. The Customer Services Team (01202 443160) and the Dorset Advocacy Service (0300 343 7000) can also be helpful in providing further advice and support to people who feel that services are not listening to their point of view. We are sorry that the parking at the Alderney Hospital can be difficult, and I am pleased to advise that we are looking at additional car parking to increase the number of spaces. We have been undertaking some building work on the site to improve the inpatient facilities for older people, however this has had an impact on parking whilst the work is taking place. This is due to finish in September 2013, at which point more parking will be available again. In addition, we will then also be looking at redeveloping other parts of the hospital site to create more parking spaces which we hope will be completed by the end of March 2014. I hope this improves your experience on any future visits to Alderney you may make. Hopefully these plans will also mean not so many cars are parked down the driveway, which I am sorry to hear makes you concerned about your safety when moving about the site. It may be helpful to advise that there are walkways on either side of the drive; however we do understand that the number of cars can make manoeuvring difficult and we hope the action we are taking reassures you this will be addressed. I hope our comments are helpful, however if you wish to discuss any part of your feedback in further detail, or you have any other suggestions for how we can improve things, please do contact Rachel Crewe, Locality Manager for the Poole Community Mental Health Teams on 01202 305062 who is happy to talk this through further.