The Riggs Difference: Where Understanding Leads to Recovery
Admissions Clinician and Manager Nicole May, LICSW, talks about what happens during the admissions consultation and the first day a patient is admitted to the Austen Riggs Center.
Transcript
So, the pre-admission process that we do by phone and, you know, gathering documentation, is all in an effort to get someone on our waitlist. And once somebody's on our waitlist, we have them come in for an in-person consultation with possible admission. So, once someone's on the waitlist, it's not a guarantee that they will be admitted, but it's very likely. 95% of patients that make it to the waitlist are admitted on the day of their admissions consultation.
So, the admissions day is structured such that patients arrive with or without family members - though it's encouraged to involve family that day - first thing in the morning, usually around 9:00 a.m. They'll have a tour of the campus at 9:30 and we try to arrange for a current patient to actually provide that tour, so you're getting insight from someone who's in the treatment.
The consultation starts promptly at 10:30, and will go for two hours, and during that first hour, the potential patient will meet with the admissions doctor alone, and if they have any family members attending that family member will meet with a social worker separately. There'll be a break in the middle, about five minutes, and then the family member will join the patient and the admissions doctor for the second hour of the consultation, at the end of which the doctor will decide whether or not to officially offer admission, which like I said usually happens.
Patients come packed and prepared to be admitted that day. And then it's a full afternoon, so we really let patients know, you should expect that it's going to be a lot of back-to-back appointments. You'll have lunch with a patient sponsor. You'll meet with the business office to sign some forms and provide a prepayment on the day of admission. You will meet with your therapist and your psychiatrist that day, that afternoon. And then we'll get you moved over into the main residence, and you'll have a meeting with nursing later that evening. So, we just take it one step at a time, but we'll get you through that first day and then, you know, we can look at the next few days of what your initial schedule will look like.
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