The highest branches

Tuesdays are the day on which I am the psychiatrist working with the Urgent Response Team. Started today with a discussion of those in need of assessments today. Then the "clinicians" in the team (the non medical staff) began the process of assessments and organisation of what happens next. 

I was called on to see a young woman with a severe depression, with a view to confirming the diagnosis, and deciding whether medication would benefit her (my judgement is that it will help). The system we have is that I will not see her again. She will go to a Planned Acute Care team, and after a week or two of seeing different staff members each time her progress is assessed, she will be referred to ongoing care or back to GP. 

This is a system which is designed around staff needs not patient preferences. I'm not convinced that it is the best way. 

Mid morning (actually at the time I was seeing the above young woman) was a meeting on a regional approach to acute inpatient care, to which I am regularly invited and to which as regularly I cannot go because of other commitments. I suggested in my email apologising for non attendance, that we need to break down the barriers between different parts of the services, and for my effort have been invited to meet and discuss further. Perhaps there may be traction.

In Cornwall Park just on the other side of a stone wall from the GreenLane Clinical Centre are some trees with spring growth showing against the sky. One of those trees has provided me with today's blip.