Quacktitioner Alert (4)

Dr Crippen has already described the difficulty he has in getting psychiatric patients assessed by doctors.

"A seventeen year old boy with a long psychiatric history took a paracetamol overdose a few days ago. This is his second serious suicide attempt. He was kept in hospital for nearly two days whilst the physicians sorted him out from the physical point of view. The psychiatrist did not bother to go to see him. He was “assessed” (sic) by a mental health nurse who told him to go home and make an appointment to see his GP. No appointment made to see a psychiatrist. No hospital follow up at all. Difficult to know how good the “assessment” was as the nurse did not even bother to do a letter.

What are we supposed to do now? We are worried about this boy. We are more worried about the local psychiatric department, which is dreadful beyond words. As soon as commissioning is introduced we will be removing all the psychiatric care from this hospital. We have told them this. They do not care. We did this when we were fund-holders and found excellent psychiatric services elsewhere. The Blair government abolished fund holding in 1997 for doctrinal and political reasons even though it was working well. It is now re-introducing it under a different name."

The GPs in my area believe that we have some of the worst psychiatric services in the country. The local consultant psychiatrist lost interest long ago, if indeed he ever had any.

It is difficult enough to get hold of a psychiatrist during the day and impossible at night. There are no psychiatrists in the local hospitals at night, as described here.

We described here how the government has “dealt” with the crisis by re-badging.

This is not “Oh Christ, I’m bleeding and there are no doctors available.” This is “Hospital at Night”.

Sue and Dave paper over the cracks with some psychobabble entitled “Getting a picture of the hospital at night”. They are “teambuilding.” Not just an ordinary team. They are building:

"...a multidisciplinary night team which has the competencies to cover a wide range of interventions and the capacity to call in specialist expertise when necessary."

This team is going to be so skilled that is has the "capacity" to call in a doctor. (What does "capacity" mean in this context? Why do they not write in English?) In other words, it is able to use a telephone. Count how many times the word “doctor” appears in their extraordinary protocol which, as always, can be found here.

It is not just at night. It is not, apparently, just in my part of the country. The author of “Trick cycling for Beginners”, a doctor doing post-graduate training in psychiatry, draws my attention to the state of affairs during the day as well.

How does her psychiatric hospital deal with psychotic in-patients?

Written by a nurse in the psychiatric day hospital:

"Norman stated that he had auditory hallucinations - the voices were too loud for him to concentrate. Again he was advised to inform his GP of his symptoms."

You do not believe it do you?

Read the full story here.

One of Dr Crippen’s patients, who was an in-patient on the psychiatric ward, had a relapse of his depression. He was frightened and distressed. He called one of the psychiatric nurses. She gave him 10p and advised him to call the Samaritans. On the ward phone. Who needs psychiatrists?

You probably do not believe that either.

It is true.

This is the CMHT in full flight. This is how NHS psychiatric patients are treated. This is dumbing down.

Welcome back to the wonderful world of the Quacktitioners.

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I add on an elegant description of the realities of Hospital at Night written by an experienced hospital doctor who is about to be replaced by a quacktitioner.

Why does no one believe that this is happening?

This is not about attacking nurses. It is about trying to save the Health Service.

Read this doctor's full account here