Can anyone help me please. Ken my husband is still on a section 3 in the local hospital. I have an urgent appointment with the Consultant to try to get her to let him out of hospital grounds with me 3 afternoons each week.
As far as I can ascertain from searching the web Section 17 allows for patients to go off the ward for a period of time subject to signature by the Consultant. This seems to be for a fixed period of one time whilst I want to take him off for a few hours on 3 days of each week. Does this mean that the consultant has to sign each leave off the ward as individual forms and this will have to be done each week. If so this is disasterous for me.
I had been promised I could take him out of hospital grounds each Tuesday to visit my housebound mother by the Consultant. She signed the leave form and I therefore thought that I could take him out each Tuesday. What a shock I got the next Tuesday when I was told she had only signed for the week before, was on holiday and nothing could be done until she came back. None of the ward staff was prepared to ask any other doctor to sign.
This meant that we had to sit in the ward yet again with no privacy, other patients banging walls, moving chairs and demanding things of us - this is normal for us to experience each visiting time on the ward. I am now at breaking point and if my appointment with the Consultant tomorrow does not prove to solve this, then I have decided that my husband must come home. We have been through nearly five months of hell together - him much more than me as he has had to stay there 24 hours a day. He is not violent, never has been! He is a kind, quiet man who went into hospital to have his medication adjusted. I just cannot believe how we have reached our present position.
I wonder what rights I have to bring him home. It seems that to do this through the correct procedures will also take weeks and weeks. The ward sister has a very elastic concept of time spans. Anyone any experience of any of my problems please? xxx TinaT
As far as I can ascertain from searching the web Section 17 allows for patients to go off the ward for a period of time subject to signature by the Consultant. This seems to be for a fixed period of one time whilst I want to take him off for a few hours on 3 days of each week. Does this mean that the consultant has to sign each leave off the ward as individual forms and this will have to be done each week. If so this is disasterous for me.
I had been promised I could take him out of hospital grounds each Tuesday to visit my housebound mother by the Consultant. She signed the leave form and I therefore thought that I could take him out each Tuesday. What a shock I got the next Tuesday when I was told she had only signed for the week before, was on holiday and nothing could be done until she came back. None of the ward staff was prepared to ask any other doctor to sign.
This meant that we had to sit in the ward yet again with no privacy, other patients banging walls, moving chairs and demanding things of us - this is normal for us to experience each visiting time on the ward. I am now at breaking point and if my appointment with the Consultant tomorrow does not prove to solve this, then I have decided that my husband must come home. We have been through nearly five months of hell together - him much more than me as he has had to stay there 24 hours a day. He is not violent, never has been! He is a kind, quiet man who went into hospital to have his medication adjusted. I just cannot believe how we have reached our present position.
I wonder what rights I have to bring him home. It seems that to do this through the correct procedures will also take weeks and weeks. The ward sister has a very elastic concept of time spans. Anyone any experience of any of my problems please? xxx TinaT