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Mental health service consistency

Posted By controllerqw69

"Mental health service consistency"

About: Kalgoorlie Mental Health Inpatient Service

(as the patient),

I believe that Kalgoorlie Community mental health has a lot of staff turnover. From what I know, the doctors, psychiatrists and case-managers aren't there very long.

It seems to me that each time a new case-manager is allocated to a client, it is very stressful (lack of continuity & difficulty trusting a new staff member). I believe the doctors do not always agree with each other which means a change over of medication.

On 4 occasions staff have entered the treatment room when I was with the nurse & they did not knock or look through the peep hole to see if it was suitable to come in. I felt disrespected and unsafe - on one occasion my top was raised for measurement and a man came in.

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Responses

Response from Peter Tredinnick, Executive Director, Regional Office, WACHS Goldfields 3 years ago
Peter Tredinnick
Executive Director, Regional Office,
WACHS Goldfields

Executive Director WACHS Goldfields

Submitted on 6/01/2022 at 4:28 PM
Published on Care Opinion Australia at 4:58 PM

picture of Peter Tredinnick

Dear controllerqw69,

Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention. The Community Mental Health service is continuously seeking to appoint staff on a permanent basis but this is not always achieved, and recently has been made harder by the Covid restrictions. As you say, staff turnover results in a lack of continuity for which we sincerely apologise. We know that it is frustrating for patients to have to repeat their story and have changes in treatment.

One way we have tried to minimise the impact for consumers is to support them in writing out their story in a format which can be added to the medical record so that the patient can refer to this and doesn’t have to repeat the same information to a new clinician. Each clinician will still want to hear directly from the patient about how they are right now though. If you would like to participate in this initiative, please contact Kathy Nikolaiyjenko, Consumer Liaison officer at Community Mental Health, on 9088 6200, Kathy can assist you to prepare your information to go on your records.

Regarding the issue of privacy that you raise I was dismayed to hear of your experiences, and apologise that this has happened. We will remind staff about maintaining privacy for patients when in the treatment room. If you would like to provide more specific information about your experience, please contact Donnie Martin, Regional Manager Mental Health on 9088 6200 and Donnie will be able to facilitate a review of your care.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to us about your concerns, as this helps us to make improvements to our service that matter to our consumers.

Kind Regards

Peter Tredinnick
Regional Director
WACHS Goldfields

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