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Danetre Hospital
2022-09-30
Person
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5
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30th September 2022
The service, once you access it, is excellent. The staff are fantastic; caring and helpful...couldn't ask for more.
Suggested improvements
The waiting list is completely unacceptable. To be fair, the staff themselves, and my GP, are aware of this, and nobody tries to justify it. But really, it just takes way too long. This is not a trivial problem, I have suffered massively in terms of deteriorating mental health due to the lack of help on offer, and it's completely preventable. I can't help feeling that trans people, as a group, are being treated as second class citizens. It's as if we don't matter, and the delays are just hard luck. The tabloid press approach, which would have us portrayed as being somehow "unworthy" of receiving treatment, is given impetus by the reality, and it is not a joke!
2nd November 2022
Response from Danetre Hospital
Thank you for your comments, which sadly articulate all too well the effects of a clinical resource that is currently unable to keep up with the pace of extraordinary demand. NHS England, who commission our GIC fully acknowledge the national shortfall of gender related services. As a result, locally based Trans Health Hubs have been coming online to provide additional support and prescribing for patients. This is still in it's earliest stages and we believe many more hubs will be needed to have a positive impact on waiting times. We're also very much in agreement with your views on how extended waiting times can make people vulnerable to mental health issues and we would expect to see such issues reduce in line with waiting times becoming shorter. We continue to recruit interested clinicians and offer them the opportunity and training to progress to registered gender specialists-though this does take a number of years to achieve.