gravitycanfly asked:

Reading your post about the ward meeting I can't help but think that they're quite deliberately targeting you as a safeguarding issue because you're trying to fight for better care for J and you're making trouble for them. Pesky carers/family members turning up and trying to keep the patients safe! Get rid of them by any means....

I think you’re giving them too much credit! It’s just stupid that they have safeguarding policies and training in kneejerkery, and yet most of the nurses don’t seem to understand basic patient distress, or know what a “trigger” is, how to observe, or how to treat people who have complex feelings, like “I want to die, but I also want to get well”. “I want to self harm, but I want to be safe from myself”. You can almost see the cogs turning, like they have been asked a difficult maths question. They work in mental health wards, for christs sake. :(
Don’t worry, by shining a spotlight on me gives me a chance to give them both barrels about J’s treatment. “If you were a relative, partner, or carer, a helpless bystander to all this shit (treatment), you’d be fuckin’ suicidal too” etc. ;) 

To all etc. / current status of J's care:

J is v.suicidal and wanting to harm herself. I’m impatiently waiting to read yet another “behaviour contract” - basically the kind of arrangement whereby whatever J does she can’t win, but life is easier for the staff. If it says “If J s/harms then she will be discharged from the ward” I will be most displeased, since s/h-ing can be her protective alternative to suicide attempts, therefore she might be at her most suicidal. If she is forced to leave the ward whilst she is suicidal I will immediately phone the police so she can be kept safe and hopefully readmitted, if needs be. “Duty of Care” is a meaningless phrase in the fight to free beds.

We had a chat with Nurse Na- today. Again, explaining the how the events of the last week have effected J. The nurses we talk to seem to have been quite oblivious to the sheer catastrophe, triggers and hypocrisy in J’s care since she was in the LRI for the leg treatment (see previous entries). Na had to reassure J that she didn’t want her to be dead, didn’t think she was a waste of a bed or room, a burden, or “in the way”. She was also quite taken aback by some of the things that have been said to J by other staff, like her being “lucky to still be on this ward”, and that self harm will lead to an earlier discharge, and older statements about her being “selfish” or needing “to be sent away” when a nurse was irritated with her behaviour, whilst she was being assessed to be sent to the Cambian run unit in Birmingham.  
J wants to be safe but she also is scared of what she might do to herself. Na seemed to understand this and was planning to pass a few points on to other staff. She’s particularly anxious about this discharge date in ten days time, which we only learnt about a couple of days ago. 

Wouldn’t we all be?