Share review of Psychiatry-UK

Psychiatry-UK 2022-09-14 Person 2 5 0

My psychiatrist and the customer support staff I have been in contact with have been professional, courteous and (as far as I am able to judge as a layperson) seem competent. However, at an organisational/process level PUK does not empower its staff to provide a good service or standard of care. I am being titrated onto some fairly major medication for a condition I'm not 100% convinced has been correctly diagnosed. I have had exactly one, hour long, video call conversation with my psychiatrist throughout this entire process, and this was nearly a year ago. I have never met anyone in person, and the rest of the process has been conducted entirely over text-based messages on PUK's patient portal. Each month I have filled in a monitoring form, and most months I have written about side affects I am experiencing or concerns I have, and every month these concerns are completely ignored - I just get a standard "prescription issued" response. If I send a message expressing a concern outside of these forms, I get a single line response. The processes themselves are very opaque from a patients' perspective. Nobody ever spoke to me about how the titration was going to work or whether/how I should request future prescriptions. I have repeatedly asked for clarification or to be directed to guidance on these issues, and again have been completely ignored. Furthermore the web portal, which is the ONLY way to contact PUK staff - clinical or customer service - feels like an alpha/early beta version that has been rushed out to the public - it is incredibly clunky, they have clearly not bothered to do any user testing, and it is highly unreliable - it is regularly unavailable to access. Overall it feels like psychiatry UK are taking on far more patients than they can really handle or are ready for and are offering the absolute bare minimum of patient care as a result.