The Diamond Regional Hospital is the first of the six new hospitals to offer inpatient care for psychiatric patients, the Department of Public Information (DPI) said yesterday.
This was revealed during a recent interview with the Administrator, Dr Sheik Amir.
“Right now, we are seeing more than we were catered for. We are the only facility of the six new hospitals that has psychiatric patients admitted…Of course we have to send them, like the very aggressive patients, to the GPHC but we do admit a few of them here, and we do manage them,” he told DPI.
The Head Psychiatrist, Dr Andria Veeren, will soon start its mobile clinic on the first Thursday of every month.
“The whole idea behind the mobile clinic is to reach patients who can’t come to the hospital, but not only patients who can’t reach the hospital, but patients who can be a little more violent and aggressive and are not as compliant with medication. So, you find a lot of times that they don’t have insight, so they are not aware that they are sick,” she told DPI.
The department also conducts regular checks on their patients to ensure that they are doing well.
“So, we don’t wait until their next appointment. We call them to check up on them, see how they are doing,” she stated.
In the past year, the department has seen some 2087 patients. These were either referrals from the Georgetown Public Hospital, other departments within the hospital, or walk-in patients.
The doctor was posted to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre in 2023, as part of the Ministry of Health’s efforts to decentralize that service, DPI said. She also visits Kuru Kuru, Eccles, Herstelling, St Cuthbert’s, Supply and Soesdyke health centres.
Discussion