Your comments

Hi,

Thank you very much for replying to questions regarding rTMS. I am considering undergoing the treatment from one of the private providers in London. Can you please tell whether the treatment is appreciably different depending on who is doing it? It seems in some cases psychiatrists initially determine coil placement, etc, where in others a technician does it. Additionally, it seems that the equipment manufacturer and coils vary as well. Also, do you feel a tapering off of treatment is beneficial or not? Thank you so much for your help. I have had a difficult time finding these answers when searching the web and when speaking to my psychiatrist.

Kind regards

Further to my comments of 28th February I was contacted by Connie Greig on 13th March. Even though this phone call did not transpire, sadly, in an extra call for my elderly father, it did however result in a reassessment of my mothers needs. This was done very quickly, by early the next morning in fact and with a follow up call on the 15th March.
I was reassured that the district nurses are only a phone call call away should my brother feel he needs them.
Thank you for your help.

Received an excellent service. The staff were friendly, very caring and efficient. My appointments were punctual. Very please with the service.

It is with sadness and some anger that I feel I must comment. I rang the district nurse service on Tuesday regarding my 89 year old father, who is an insulin dependant diabetic and also has a catheter fitted. This service, which have trained my brother, who is carer for both my dad and 86 year old mum, in administering insulin, has systematically pulled away from visiting my dad albeit by one evening call. They would like to drop this call too, but my mum and brother have, quite rightly, refused for this to happen.

I rang whilst I was making a visit from my home in Canterbury to ask if it was possible for an extra visit on one morning a week. This was refused! I feel this service is putting a huge amount of pressure onto the shoulders of my 60 year old brother and taking advantage of his good nature. I know time and resources are stretched in the NHS, my daughter works for them, however I also worry about the mental and physical wellbeing of my brother. What would have happened to my dad if my brother was not living at home?

I attended this walk in clinic to have a coil replaced on a Weds just before 4pm only to be told that I was too late to be seen that evening even though it is open until 7pm. The receptionist then handed me the opening times. I attended the women only 8am-11am on the Thurs morning arriving around 8.55am to be told by the same receptionist I could not be seen. When I asked when I could come back as this was the 2nd time in two days (taking time off work) that I had been turned away I was told there was nothing for 2 weeks (even though another walk in clinic was advertised from 12-4pm the same day). When I queried whether it was walk in or appointments I was told if I wanted an appointment I would need to wait until the following Monday to even make the call to book the appointment. I'm still none the wiser whether I can walk in or need to make an appointment. No wonder women like me dread attending these clinics and as a result let contraception & smear test expire. To cap it all off the receptionist had a can't be bothered attitude and was unwilling to help me find out the best time to come and also could not be bothered to ask a simple questions as to whether my contraception had expired.

Having the clinic only open for men on Saturdays is hugely sexist, the women-only clinic is during the week when I (and most women) work. I cannot afford to take time off work and don’t get to choose my holidays, is there any chance of accessing this clinic in the evening and not being turned away as the clinic is usually full up in an hour? Unfortunately it is not the 1940s and I have to work in the daytime.

My mum was recently admitted to Scadbury Unit under a Section 2 . The PRU had made several mistakes with her care & medication which resulted in her being Sectioned & I was obviously extremely concerned for her welfare . I needn't have been , I can honestly say that the care and attention she received from EVERYONE on Scadbury was amazing . They were not only professional and caring but sympathetic , friendly , respectful and informative . I cannot thank them all enough for the support they showed both my mum and me . They have stabilised my mums' medication & we are a lot happier .

With the exception of a few notable individuals and Day Treatment Team, in particular, Oxleas mental health services provide consistently poor care. Extremely difficult accessing services and wait times of up to four months to see a psychiatrist for medication review. Services often take a long time to respond (or don't respond at all), and do not follow up. Empty promises should not be made to patients in crisis and patients should not have to constantly follow-up to try to receive any care/support.

There seems to be a severe lack of communication between services Oxleas runs with advice often differing dramatically depending on the individual you get through to. There also seems to be a lack of consistency present in the provision of service with one person saying they will be discussing further treatment pathways with you at a future meeting while another - presumably having not looked thoroughly at the case file - will go ahead and discharge you from the service. The onus is then on you to get undischarged and then begin the drawn-out process of waiting to be seen again. Whatever metric-driven approach the trust is pursuing is definitely not working in terms of patient outcomes.

The services are widely considered to be wholly inadequate and the comments here only scratch the surface of the systematic failures of the service, believe me. The majority of people who would complain are regularly in crisis, not least due to the mismanagement and negligent practices of Oxleas, and are not in a position to be writing complaints or going through PALS. It is only through sheer frustration with the services over the past couple of years that I've brought myself to begin the complaints procedures myself.

Management should hang their heads in shame at the state of the services they oversee. I sincerely hope their contract is up for renewal soon. It is not hyperbole to say that people die as a result of the malpractice that passes for patient care under this trust, The Heights at Charlton being a particularly egregious example.