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Care Opinion

SLMHS Clinics

Posted By A service user

"SLMHS Clinics"

About: Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Services

(as a service user),

Hi,

I am a long-term client in the service and along with the illness and complicating factors caused by it have also had to deal with changes in my consultants a number of times due SLMHS organisational factors or retirements.   Having been assigned to a new consultant a few years ago I find that I'am mainly dealing with registrars during clinic visits, I appreciate that consultants have a large number of clients but I think that it is imperative that they see a client once every 12 months especially if the client has more than 3 clinics in the year and has had any relapses or other setbacks.  From my own personal experience a good consultant/client relationship can only occur from face to face meetings. 

 
I have been lucky that the registrars are competent and caring but having to begin to go through my whole story every 6 months with a new registrar is very difficult, especially when there are complicating medical factors that I have to keep highlighting/explaining to ensure that no change in treatment could cause harm.  This can be very stressful as I have great difficulty with some treatments as noted by the service.  I feel many clients would be of the same view on this matter. 
I feel that SLMHS should also have a simple sheet or checklist listing all medications that a patient has been prescribed and what if any major side-effects they may have had, most especially if they had to be removed from the medication in the patients file.  This would both allow any registrar to quickly see what the patient has been on and also allow the medical/pharmacy staff to track any patterns in side-effects, this may show a patient is potentially intolerant or sensitive to types or groups of medication.  Perhaps the pharmacy could look into this, it can be difficult for patient to recall what medication they have been on and what side-effects occurred during a clinic.  From a patient safety management perspective I think this is something that would be of benefit to both service providers and users especially if the client has been in the service a long time and where more than one SLMHS medical history treatment file may exist. 
Thank you. 
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Responses

Response from Joanne O'Halloran, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Service, HSE 5 years ago
We are preparing to make a change
Joanne O'Halloran
Senior Clinical Psychologist, Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Service,
HSE

I meet with service users and sometimes with their families. I assess psychological problems and provide psychological interventions in an effort to help service users overcome their difficulties.

Submitted on 16/05/2018 at 09:36
Published on Care Opinion on 17/05/2018 at 15:32

picture of Joanne O'Halloran

Dear Service User,

Thank you for taking the time to share your experience of SLMHS.

Care Opinion provides us with an opportunity to listen to people's experience of our service, to respond and make positive changes to our service based on the feedback that you and others provide. This is important to us.

What you say makes a lot of sense and I am going to share your feedback with the psychiatrists and management in the service so that they can consider and possibly consider changes in how access to consultants is available, and also to explore whether a medication checklist could be utilised.

This may take some time but myself or another member of the Care Opinion Response Team will come back to update you on any changes we make.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your experience.

Best wishes

Joanne

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful
Response from Joanne O'Halloran, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Service, HSE 5 years ago
Joanne O'Halloran
Senior Clinical Psychologist, Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Service,
HSE

I meet with service users and sometimes with their families. I assess psychological problems and provide psychological interventions in an effort to help service users overcome their difficulties.

Submitted on 30/05/2018 at 16:47
Published on Care Opinion at 16:51

picture of Joanne O'Halloran

Dear Service User,

I wanted to let you know about a local initiative that is currently underway and which may interest you based on your feedback about the service. A number of staff are currently exploring implementing a user passport which service users could bring to their appointments.

A user passport is a brief statment of key facts that service users using mental health services can use to help them avoid repeating their history and preferences. The passport idea, which includes clinical information as well as key personal preferences, will be co-developed by service users, parents and carers to be used across care settings either on paper or on mobile phones.

I heard about this initiative yesterday and wonder if you would be interested in becoming involved in helping to develop a user passport for our service?

If you would like more information please contact me at joanne.ohalloran@hse.ie and I can email you the details of one of the persons involved in the project.

Joanne

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Response from Joanne O'Halloran, Senior Clinical Psychologist, Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Service, HSE 5 years ago
We have made a change
Joanne O'Halloran
Senior Clinical Psychologist, Sligo/Leitrim Mental Health Service,
HSE

I meet with service users and sometimes with their families. I assess psychological problems and provide psychological interventions in an effort to help service users overcome their difficulties.

Submitted on 12/04/2019 at 09:04
Published on Care Opinion at 10:18

picture of Joanne O'Halloran

Dear Service User,

Since our conversation last year, I am delighted that the service user passport which was at the time in the early phase of development has since been designed and will now be piloted with two teams in the sligo/leitrim mental health services for 6 months before review/evaluation and hopefully roll-out to all teams.

Sinead Fallon, Peer Support Worker in this area has been instrumental in this development and she told me that they are always looking for more input from interested individuals to join their co-production team. If anyone is interested in discussing this more with Sinead, she can be contacted at sineadh.fallon@hse.ie

Service user, your feedback on Care Opinion last year has helped progress this development and I would like to thank you for your contribution.

Joanne

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