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Care Opinion

Diaphragm for contraception

Posted By Simon A

"Diaphragm for contraception"

About: Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust

(as a service user),


We have found a very good way of contraception that was popular in  USA in the beginning of 20-th century,  but with new designs and materials it is getting back its popularity in Europe:  the contraceptive diaphragm. 

And here our story starts. We tried to phone and visit our local sexual health clinic. It was hard to get to the right person who deals with diaphragms:  the receptionists were completely unaware of diaphragms and constantly tried to 'help us' by saying: you are probably meaning a "coil" ?    

Reception

Reception


Appointments

Appointments


But, finally, we found that day of the week, when the needed professional was in place and  after a LONG wait my wife received a service from a trained professional.  

Care Staff

Care Staff

who wasted 40 minutes to fill a long survey (it would become clear below, why I used the word "wasted") and finally issued us a very good Diaphragm with 2 packs of Contraceptive Gel to be used with it. They told my wife that she doesn't need to wait for an appointment, and when the Gel finishes,  just come to the reception and they will give you a new pack. 

Thus, I felt like we we wasted 6 hours, but we finally got what we wanted. 

And, I want to say, we are happy with the diaphragm and feel sorry for the other people who simply are not told about this possibility.    

 Around 4 months later we came to  the reception of Tameside & Glossop Centre for Sexual Health to get a fresh supply of the Gel.  We have seen, they had a few new tubes in their hands, but they refused to give us any because they said they don't know who we are, or who prescribed us this diaphragm. They said that they know nothing about diaphragms and all the stuff has changed here and that they have a new computer system and have NO DATA about us apart from our name and address.  They said we need an appointment with a specialist AGAIN, but we will need to  spend a day in the queue and the specialists have more important cases to deal with. So, we felt like this was a polite form to say "go away and never come back". 

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Responses

Response from Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust 6 years ago
Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 03/11/2017 at 16:11
Published on Care Opinion at 16:25

We are sorry to hear of the difficulties you have experienced in the Sexual Health Clinic.

Please be assured your comments have been sent to the team for their awareness.

if you would like to discuss this further please contact the PALS & Complaints team on 0161 922 4466 who will try to assist you further.

Update posted by Simon A (a service user)

I would like to understand, what went wrong. There are several logically possible answers:

1) The Health Practitioner misinformed that gel can be taken at the reception, because reception staff is not allowed to see any medical details on their computer and so they cannot decide if they should give the gel or not. To get it, we always need to waste time of trained professionals.

2) Reception staff was not properly trained to press the needed button to see my wife's health history.

3) The health histories of all the patients were indeed deleted when a "new system" was installed, which is a serious data issue, leading to troubles for all the patients.

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