\n The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust launched the NHS First Response Service during the Covid pandemic, which offers 24\/7 telephone access to a mental health professional via 111 option 2.\n<\/p>\n
\n But demand for the service has meant patients often face lengthy waits before their crisis calls are answered.\n<\/p>\n
\n One man, who was invited to share his experiences with the trust’s board of directors, said on one occasion he had waited 45 minutes before eventually giving up\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “I was in crisis so I called 111 option 2 and they kept me waiting and waiting, ringing and ringing, 45 minutes plus, so I hung up.\n<\/p>\n
\n “I felt rejected, I felt disappointed – no one could help me.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Stewart Gee, chief transformational officer, added that the patient had waited\u00a0an “unacceptable length of time” during his first crisis call.\n<\/p>\n
\n He said: “Some of the issues we have had historically is capacity and demand and not really understanding that the way we should have.\n<\/p>\n
\n “We didn’t have the right number of staff answering calls at the right time, hence you’re having to wait what is an unacceptable length of time for your call to be answered.”\n<\/p>\n
VIDEO LINK CALLS<\/strong><\/p>\n \n After sharing his experiences with the directors, the patient urged the trust to consider adding a video link to the crisis service.\n<\/p>\n \n He\u00a0said: “A video link could be a brilliant idea because the people on 111 option 2 will be able to see what the person is doing at the time and the emotions they are actually going through.\n<\/p>\n \n “Voice is okay, but the image would be more profound.”\n<\/p>\n \n Jason Hollidge, chief finance officer at NSFT, said it was a “fantastic idea”.\n<\/p>\n \n He said: “We need to really modernise the way we provide our services and I absolutely want to get involved in trying to take that forward.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust launched the NHS First Response Service during the Covid pandemic, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-327803","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114993034908875411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}