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St Mary's Hospital
2022-07-22
Person
3
5
0
22nd July 2022
Staff are kind and friendly toward my sister and myself.
Suggested improvements
My sister was admitted to Sandpiper Ward after a suicidal attempt and continuous threats of not feeling safe and regret not killing herself. I managed to convince my sister to go as an inpatient into hospital, which she agreed luckily.
Everyone on the ward is friendly and polite, and treated my sister with the respect she needed. However, the ward allows the patients to leave the ward unescorted when they would like to. Myself and my sister begged the ward not to let her out on unescorted whilst they are weaning her off her antidepressants as she openly said she did not feel safe enough. These concerns were dismissed. My sister’s private therapist, that we paid for, even emailed the ward manager about concerns with My sister being allowed unescorted but this was dismissed to. The next day my sister ended up on going missing and not returning from unescorted leave - making us to search for my sister late one evening. I raised concerns again but these were dismissed.
On the first few days on the ward, my sister snuck a scalpel on onto her ward and began cutting at her wrist for several hours without staff realising. My sister was emotionally shut down at this point when my sister went to the staff and shown them their arm, as a sign of help. Staff members simply told my sister that it was ‘her choice to hand in the scalpel when she was ready’. My sister returned back to her room with the scalpel trying to decide whether to cut her radial artery. My sister tells me that she snuck a plastic bag before this incident and that she spent all afternoon with a bag round her head trying to suffocate herself. Staff member did not realise this was happening as their observations included looking through the window and seeing my sister facing away from the ward.
Overall, I believe nursing staff and support workers are caring and supportive, but management and doctors did not take us as a family seriously and made us feel like we were overreacting. My sister was discharged feeling let down once again by mental health services and as a family it has opened our eyes to poor treatment mental health patient can receive. My sister was discharged feeling actively suicidal and as a family we are left to deal with it, being told that it’s my sisters responsibility if she’s dies, even though we have asked for help continuously.
5th October 2022
Response from St Mary's Hospital
Thank you for your feedback. The approach we use on Sandpiper ward is to reach a balance between maintaining someone’s safety and promoting personal responsibility whilst increasing someone’s ability to care for themselves. I appreciate how difficult and upsetting it can be when a loved one shares with you that they want to harm themselves and that they regret that they were not successful in ending their life. To try and offer a degree of reassurance a person’s presentation and risks are under constant review along with the level or restriction / support required. Leave is a crucial part of recovery, only agreed following real time risk assessment and subject to regular review by the MDT. We have found and literature supports that removing a person’s control and or actively preventing someone from harming themselves can be counterproductive for someone’s recovery. It can lead to the person feeling that they need to rely on others to care for them. Rather, we encourage people to reach out for support prior to any incidents in order to support them to identify other ways of coping. Following any incidents of self-harm we offer the person the opportunity to reflect on the situation to learn from this and identify other ways of coping.