The out of hours social work team.

I saw a woman on Saturday, who was very depressed and had taken quite a large O/D. She also described a history of child hood sexual abuse. I spent a long time talking to her and gave her details of counselling organisations that I thought would be able to help her. She was reluctant to contact them but took the details anyway. I also promised to refer her to our local Enhanced primary care team, which I did. Today (Monday) there was a message from her on the answer phone asking me to call her on her mobile. Trouble was she had not left her mobile number on the message. In her message to me she sounded distressed but had not said that she was on top of the multi-storey car park about to jump off or had taken another O/D and was calling to say good bye, just could I call her.

So what to do?

I phoned the police, explained the situation and asked them if there was any way they could obtain her mobile number. In passing I mentioned that she was a veterinary nurse in Anytown but had no idea in which practice. The Police are unable to get mobile numbers but they promised to look into it and get back to me. Not expecting to hear anything more I was surprised to hear back from them when they called to say that they had tracked her town to her place of work and that she was fine. She had only called to say that she had decided to call one of the counselling organisation that I had given her after all.

Phew.

But good work on the part of the Police don’t you think!