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To what extent do TV hospital dramas reflect reality? Not much, according to Antony Sumara from Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. He particularly targets BBC dramas, but I doubt they are alone in ignoring good practice, patient confidentiality and attention to hygiene in the search for a gripping storyline, as he claims. Perhaps writers don’t feel that an episode of someone waiting for treatment or extolling the virtues of hand washing will draw those viewers in.
How well versed are you in what you can expect from your hospital stay? Every local NHS organisation is expected to produce a guide to local services and deliver that to all households in their area. This one is from Milton Keynes (PDF).
Have you read the NHS Constitution so you know which waiting times have been enshrined within it – no longer than four hours in A&E, for example? The constitution says that you have a right to be treated with a professional standard of care, though to be fair it doesn’t explicitly say that staff shouldn’t be sorting out their love life in corridors when they’re not treating you.
Bridget O'Connell, Head of Information
4 CommentsA guest post by Marion Janner, founder of the Star Wards project
Hmm. Perhaps the only uncontroversial words in the heading are those with a character count below 4. That’s 3 of them (I’ve just started ‘tweeting’ on Twitter and am now obsessed with character count as each tweet has to be haiku-like petite, under 140 characters. I usually find it hard to express myself in under 140 minutes).
Anyway, returning to my own character, it’s been totally fucked over in the last seven years by the explosion of borderline personality disorder. BPD is actually as common as schizophrenia but most people have never heard of it. I hadn’t until many months after I became inexplicably hyper-depressed and started, completely bewilderingly, self-harming as a way of managing extreme plunges in mood (I go on and on about this in my website Mentalising). And when my partner of 20 years walked out on me, a month after our civil partnership ceremony and having forgotten to mention her plans to me, the suicidality started.
You might be familiar with OCD-type compulsions – hand-washing, germ-avoidance, safety rituals. My compulsion to kill myself is broadly similar. Although obviously with the opposite intention in terms of life preservation. It’s pretty exhausting (not least for my extensive team of therapists) trying to contain this force and all gets very messy when I decide to take an overdose as a way of flirting with death and simultaneously gaining a sense of being able to control my destiny when I sheepishly land in A&E to get the overdose reversed.
So. The chance of a break from having to internally manage my self-demolition urges is irresistible. Butlins is great, what with all the entertainment, slot machines and good grub, but it’s a lot to ask them to manage my suicidality. Whereas my lovely local, St Ann’s in Tottenham, may not have the slot machines, but they do lock me in and remove all tolerable methods of disposing of myself. Such a relief.
I’m a bit of a regular at St Ann’s, and the familiar staff team greet me with hugs and welcomes, perhaps temporarily forgetting that I’m a nightmare patient for them. For example. I’m 4’9” so not very tall, but while being ‘specialed’ via 1:1 staff with me 24/7, I’ve still managed to unscrew a lightbulb from the ceiling and use it to self-harm. All very David Blaine and presumably infuriating for staff. Yet they manage to respond to my relentless self-destructiveness with patience, understanding, non-judgementalness (?) and to use an old-fashioned term – compassion.
I love it there. I don’t need to worry about work or my weird eating nonsense or looking after my foster sons or (not) answering the phone or writing blogs or going to meetings or acting cheerful. I know from my work running the Star Wards project that St Ann’s is scarcely in the Premier League of hospitals, indeed it’s going to be knocked down and replaced. But it has exactly what I need, and what my friends and family need, to keep me safe and provide a little break from the overwhelming task of keeping it all together. There are very few days when I’d rather be at home than in hospital.
Marion Janner
Marion was awarded an OBE for services to mental health care in the New Year Honours list 2010.
20 CommentsI've got a cold and am oscillating between coughing loudly in the hope of garnering sympathy, and pretending I'm fine due to the embarrassment at feeling so lousy with something so commonplace.
What then, to make of the recent report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists that half of people in hospital due to mental health problems do not receive any gifts or cards during their time in hospital, compared to a third of people in hospital due to physical health problems? If it is hard to admit to being laid low by the common cold, how much harder to try and explain about a mental health condition?
A British study found that psychiatric patients were significantly less likely than other patients to inform friends and family that they had been admitted to hospital, despite spending a significantly longer period of time in hospital.
The study found that the psychiatric patients received fewer cards and gifts. Further, patients with mental health diagnoses tended to receive toiletries, food and cigarettes as gifts, while other patients receive flowers, balloons, magazines and chocolates.
Another British study confirmed the finding of fewer greeting cards for patients admitted to psychiatric wards. There seems to be a combination of people in hospital due to acute mental distress being unwilling to tell people about their problems, and others not knowing what to say or do when people are admitted to hospital due to a mental health condition, so end up doing nothing. What could people need more during a time when they are on a hospital ward, feeling vulnerable and distressed, but to know that others are thinking of them?
It can be easy and inexpensive to show that you care. Some hospitals, such as the North West Wales Trust allow people to send an email to a patient that will be printed out and handed to the patient. The Royal College of Psychiatry has launched their own get well soon cards that are on sale via their website.
You could also make your own, and getting the family involved in creating or writing in a card could be a good way of having a conversation about why someone is in hospital and what they might be experiencing.
Bridget O'Connell, Head of Information
6 Comments