Consistently terrible long term experiences
Bizarrely the only consistently good experience I’ve had here has been the psychiatrists. I’ve always felt kindly/respectfully treated. The CMHT staff are awful. The CPN I had was so bad I had to stop seeing them despite being desperate for care. I didn’t feel able to put in a formal complaint. The duty team are never available when called and never call back. The medical secretaries never pick up their phones. The manager isn’t helpful and again it is almost impossible to get through to them. In the end I had to call my GP about my MH who called the CMHT instead to ask what was going on. Once I had a ‘callback’ which consisted of two rings (not long enough to pick up the phone) and no message left. This counted as a ‘call back’. There is obviously something very wrong with the staff culture/morale/structure/turnover/understaffing, but this is having a terrible impact on patient care and these issues have led to suicides attempts/deaths of mentally unwell people who have not been able to get the care they need. It’s ironic that mental health staff here could do with patient care training from my local dentist - or any physical healthcare, who are usually warm/polite/respectful. It is bizarre to think that mental health staff would train physical healthcare staff to work with ppl with mental health conditions when they can’t even get the basics right. Anyway, feeling gutted that I’m under this team as I’ve lived in other places with different teams and received better care, so I know that this is particularly bad.