IvyMorgan
Posts: 729
Joined: 7/5/2007 From: Midlands, UK Status: offline
|
Oh, and, yes... NHS direct, who you call when your GP is out of action and you're not up for a trip to ER... you phone a call centre, a nurse calls you back, then a doctor calls you back, if you make it through the nurse, and then, if you're *really* going to kill yourself, a crisis team may come and see you. (But, ime, they tend to decide you don't really mean it and go away again). The whole process takes a good few hours, and there are a *lot* of hoops before you actually get help. Chances are though, NHS Direct skip the crisis team and send you to sit in a walk in centre, when the crisis team might come to you if they have time during a shift. There was that one time, when I might have ODed accidentally on my meds, and so I trundled off to ER under instruction from the Direct people, and after patronising nurses, blood tests, and generally ignoring what it was I was saying I'd been diagonised with (ie a dissociative disorder), the nurse decided I needed a psych evaluation, so, I waited for a couple of hours for the psych to come down, only to find when she did, she had a five minute conversation with the nurse, diagnosed me with schizophrenia, said she didn't need to see me and I could probably go home seeing as how I wasn't dangerous. (I lip read, this is a good thing, cos, I never got within 20 feet of the doc) I'm not bitter, oh no, not at all...
|