No consultant, Wife in pain.

[mr_mastiff]

My wife as psoriatic arthritis and is on numerous medications including methotrexate which I inject her with every week. About six months ago her consultant left taking with him his clinical nurse specialist and a number of other staff by the sound of it.

The only reason we found out about this was when my wife rang and asked why she had not been sent an appointment. Whos my new consultant?" We cannot give you one because everyone is full and not taking on anymore patients. What about my blood tests? " The nurse will keep an eye on them". What about my pain? "see your GP".

My wife went to see her GP due to increasing severe pain. "What do you normally do when the pain gets this bad"? The consultant gives me this treatment said my wife! MMMMMmm, said the Doctor I cannot give you that. Only consultants can authorise that! I will refer you to a consultant.

Received a telephone call, "I got an appointment for you in ................" but that is about a 90 mile round trip. That's the best we can do! Will he be my consultant. No She is not one of our consultants.

The story goes on and on.

Today I have put in a formal complaint. It breaks my heart to do it. I worked in the NHS for many years and I tried every way I could to avoid doing it but I have come to the end of my patience.

[unclebulgaria67]

Contact your local MP's office to see whether they can advise on this. Surely they can find out from health dept, what the alternatives are.

[mr_mastiff]

Thankyou Uncle B, I am going to wait and see what response I get from my complaint. Your suggestion will be acted on if I get no joy.

[think about it]

I'm sorry to hear your wife (and indeed you) is having problems, I fear that the referral to 'a' consultant some distance away is the 'alternative' mentioned by Uncle B and it's something I've seen a fair bit of here.

 

The BMA amongst others have shouted for a long time now about a recruitment crisis and it's terrible to see it actually becoming real. We've had an instance locally where a consultant's post has been advertised for literally years. But, a combination of geography and lack of suitable candidates has seen the once retired consultant actually come back from retirement. Numerous attempts to attract someone have failed, most recently I recall because the applicant wasn't willing to travel across the health board area and was only willing to work from one site near the border. This wasn't acceptable to the health board (and nor should it be in my opinion) and so the post remains unfilled. It doesn't stop the influx of patients, nor the very genuine need for a suitably qualified person.

 

Nevertheless, this isn't the place for politics I feel, consultant only medication is normally drawn up under a shared care agreement (a formality transferring responsibility for regular blood tests and the like) with the GP. It may be worth asking if, the medications have already been identified that may help, if a more local albeit 'full' consultant is willing to initiate the medication and send the shared care agreement through to the GP to continue the prescribing.

 

The need for consultants to initiate the medication is born out of the fact that often they're being used off-licence and a GP doesn't have the necessary specialist knowledge to initiate them, however routine monitoring can be done at practice level. Indeed, all of our methotrexate patients have active shared care agreements in place.

 

I do sympathise with your predicament entirely, I'm currently waiting on an appointment for a specialist who'll be a 197 mile 'round trip - I do hope the consultant is worth it as I'll need to make the trip more than once...

[mr_mastiff]

Thank you for your reply. My wife belongs to a support group and a number of her friends had the same consultant. Two of them have been admitted to hospital due to their condition becoming worse.They now have a consultant after being told that they had no chance before admission. This morning my wife received a letter with an appointment for a hospital nearer than the one we normally visit.

 

 

I hope that your specialist appointment gives you the result you want.