image: POhWER - the advocacy agency
|image: skip navigation
image: Home
image: How we can help
image: Our services
image: News
image: Jobs
image: About us
image: Members and trustees
image: howwecanhelp menu
You are here: Home / How we can help / Case studies /
Andrew lives on his own in St Albans and has always found it difficult to engage with other people as he is often anxious.
He has few friends and no family living close by. Andrew is diabetic and often needs this GP’s
help
as he is not able to manage his condition himself.
Visiting his GP’s surgery has become quite difficult for Andrew and he is becoming more and more anxious about his appointments, which he often unable to keep. When he does manage to attend he feels ‘unsafe’ in the waiting room and his anxiety can lead his becoming disruptive.
He recently shouted at another patient who sat next to him and swore at the receptionist when they asked him to wait until he was called for his appointment.
Andrew has now received a letter from the surgery telling him that they are removing him from their patient list because of his unreasonable behaviour and repeated failure to attend for appointments.
He is devastated.
He is happy with his GP and unable to face changing to another practice so he contacted POhWER to get support with discussing his situation with the surgery and try to make them understand his problems.
Joan, a POhWER advocate,
contacted
Andrew to talk to him about his concerns.
At first he found it difficult to trust Joan and to understand that he is in control of the situation so she took time to explain his options and how she could help him.
Andrew did not want to make a formal complaint and be labelled as a “complainer” so he decided to write his own letter,
in which he apologised and explained why he behaves as he does,
and asked Joan to check it through
He asked if he can stay at the surgery and requested
a meeting with his GP to discuss the best way to help him cope when
he goes to the surgery.
Joan went with Andrew to meet his GP and they agreed a way forward and how Andrew would agree to behave on future visits to the surgery.
Andrew was happy that he did not have to change to another GP,
and pleased that he had been able to have his say and influence the situation to his satisfaction.
This is just one example of how POhWER supports people so they are able to have a say and have influence.
image: Level Double-A conformance icon, W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
© 2012 POhWER