Share review of Psychiatry-UK

Psychiatry-UK 2023-08-08 Person 4 5 0

The service is primarily online-based and does not require face-to-face appointments. This, of course,, comes with pros and cons. Pros: - Timely replies and decisions are good when experiencing worrying side effects - Can respond whenever is convenient for you, so there's no need to take days off from work - Admin, Psychiatrist, and Titration nurse are all available to contact from the online portal. - Online portal holds all the documents, messages, and forms you have ever filled out, so it's perfect for records. Cons: - Lack of Face to face time gives a dehumanizing feeling, combined with the fact that the service is in demand, there are times when you feel like a number. - Patient experience and quality of care during titration can be reduced if they wish to get more people into the titration process. As the service is in high demand, I felt pressured by the titration nurse to settle on a dose stating that the titrations times have now changed despite the FAQs stating the titration period is as long as the individual needs, which is very contradictory and leads to reduced time for side effects to settle. Quite possibly leading to misobservations from a patient. - As its mainly text-based communications, a lot of things don't always transfer to the staff member in question (i.e., Urgency, the effectiveness of drugs) - Miscommunications: Sometimes the titration nurse and the patient can have different understandings on a matter i.e., How to take observations and fill out a form. Do you do the obs from a pre-med point of view? or is it from the view of the last dose? This wasn't made clear and led to skewed obs reporting. - Trust based: While I had no issue, patients with an addictive personality may abuse the medication and simply lie to get more. This is hard to discern through online means. Ultimately the staff was great. They are just working with the conditions and structure imposed on them. The delivery method through mainly online means can give an impersonal touch to the patient experience and gives the impression that the service just wants to churn out the numbers of "treated" patients.