 Hi everyone, so if you don't know who I am, my name is Claire Carmichael and I'm a second year adult student nurse. Actually I'm coming to the end of my second year and in January I'm going to be in third year. And for the purpose of this video I've put in Winnie the Pooh because I know Cez Francis is a massive Winnie the Pooh fan so this is for you Cez. Say hi! So I am teaming up with Cez Francis to do an amazing collaboration. I'm just going to let Cez just introduce herself, tell you a bit about her and what she does and then I'll explain about the collaboration. So without further ado here's Cez. Hi guys and well hello again if you have seen me before but if you haven't then my name is Cez and um yeah I always feel nervous about this but I don't know why. Maybe I'm just because I'm a rambly person. Please don't judge me. Like as Claire said before I am an autistic and epileptic YouTuber and I am into a lot of stuff such as Disney. Oh and Claire by the way thank you so much for Winnie the Pooh. I really really love him so much and I'm also into, hey Arnold, I'm also an actress and also I am a huge believer in raising awareness and acceptance for autism and epilepsy. I am so so honored to be collaborating with Claire because to be honest she's the one who has come up with the whole entire thing and she deserves a lot of credit. So Claire a big huge thumbs up to you and yeah that's all I can really say to be honest. So I'll hand you guys over back to Claire. See you in a moment. Firstly I just wanted to explain why I wanted to do this collaboration. So I am an adult student nurse and I found Ceza's channel actually through another channel so I'm so grateful I found her channel and to learn that she had autism and epilepsy it was fantastic for me as a student nurse because we just don't get that sort of training at university but it's not in depth and it's not enough I think for an adult nurse because when we go out into placements and on the wards we have to deal with a whole lot of patients with completely different conditions which include autism, epilepsy, you could have somebody coming with Down syndrome, you could have somebody with severe mental health problems. So I really wanted to do this collaboration and get the inside info from the person themselves because what better way to learn from somebody is from the actual person that has autism I think is just there's no better way. So this is a little Q&A I wanted to do and just find out a little bit more about autism and how we as healthcare professionals can provide the best care possible for a patient because I want to be able to give the best care possible for that person and not impact or make them anxious in any way or affect the care they receive because I haven't got the knowledge, does that make sense? I want to be the best I can to provide the best care I can for my patients so I really wanted to raise the awareness about autism as well and things that we can do just to make somebody else's life a whole lot easier and this is just an amazing way to get some information and knowledge behind it and give it to you guys so that you can be knowledgeable and just be a bit more aware about the patients that you're caring for in the future. So let's get to these questions. Question number one so I would love to know what is the best care you've received from any healthcare professional at all across the healthcare settings what's the best care that you have received and why? Out of all the appointments and the visits that I have been to within the NHS clinics, hospitals, general practitioners and all that jazz I feel that the best care or cares I've received are from my GP and from my neurologist and the reason why I've picked my neurologist and my GP as the best people who treat me with the best care is because that's I feel that they are very understanding both of them know that I have epilepsy and autism and together well when it comes between me visiting the GP and the neurologist very separately when it comes to this I feel like I'm being understood they always slow down they always speak slowly and carefully because sometimes when people speak too fast I tend to get overwhelmed by it and I just have to say slow down I don't really understand and they do do that. We also have a few chats and we discuss things together so for example if I was to have a change of my medication for my epilepsy my neurologist would sit down with me and she said okay let's try with this do you think it would be okay for you and then I ask her questions like should I stay on my regular medication or do I switch to another type of medication and she'll probably give me some reasons of why that would be possible or why I shouldn't really make that move and together we absolutely come up with the best results I think anyway and also my GP and my neurologist communicate with each other and that they communicate in the way that I have understood through the letters that I get in weeks following my neurologist appointment and what I like about them as well is that they are always welcoming and very happy plus and this is a big bonus both of their offices and their rooms they tend to be very quiet even though they have like big huge offices it feels very quiet and this is a really great place where I can absolutely have time to listen and just be in the zone and I would concentrate a bit better because sometimes noisy places make me feel overwhelmed and I find that having very quiet spaces it's much much better for me and I think it has made a lot of difference question number two so now following on from that what is the worst care you've ever received if any from the healthcare settings and why was that the worst for you or why is it poor or poorly managed any input would be amazing to someone who's on the autistic spectrum finding and settling into places that involve healthcare settings there could be a hit or miss and I've had some bad experiences because of a lot of different reasons but one of the worst experiences that I've ever ever had is when I was supposed to be referred to speech and language therapy and OT and life skills at the time of this experience is me and my parents were communicating with a community nurse and the community nurse suggested that for little bits of purposes for building up my confidence and for building up my life skills because I was nearly finishing my university degree at the time she said that there is possible services that would help me with my speech and language my OT and a few life skills along the way so me and my parents agreed to it and we've booked an appointment and it was fine when we got there though that's when things got really really bad when being my parents went into the setting for the induction me and my parents were waiting just to see what they had to offer but instead of the things that I was offered I was referred to a health team where they didn't really talk about speech and language and OT and life skills but they talked about something else which was completely different and it was very very shocking when I actually met with the person who was part of the health team she looked at my paperwork and she said I presume that you have anxiety and depression and I was never diagnosed with anxiety or depression and then the person who interviewed me asked me have you thought about committing suicide and I thought what me killing myself you must be crazy and this was all because that I was autistic and that wasn't really really right I felt I was cheated and I thought that the word autism to them is a word that has a bit of attachments to anxiety depression and suicide really but to be honest it's not true anybody can have these types of emotions and feelings but they don't have to be autistic just to have these question numbers so how do you feel as a person with autism how do you feel health care professionals judge you do you think they focus on that aspect of you or do you think they generally see you as a whole in a holistic way that cares for all of your needs not just one thing does that make sense um how do you feel that that's judged when you're visiting health care settings I have made a lot a lot of notes for the video because I needed some help and assistance but for number three I'm not very confident on going off the note so I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to read it off the notes just so it makes things a little bit easier I'll try to look up as much as possible but I think for me for now just for confidence sake I'll try and read off the paper I think some people are worried by my diagnosis of my autism I think they try to ignore the diagnosis and generally to process through my treatment very quickly maybe they are worried about some aspects or their lack of knowledge generally there's a little bit of care focusing on all needs and there seems to never to be the opportunity for offering more information in other forms to meet in these situations either people actually try to talk but just like do another thing with it I don't want to be too negative because I know not all health care professionals are like that but in some cases some people won't talk to me and I always have to rely on my parents and my carers for this and it is a bit frustrating really because every time someone does that I feel there's a lack of confidence just between them and myself and I understand a lot of people are afraid of people who are autistic but autistic people are not very scary believe me if you see me in real life I'm not as scary as you think I am I'm just an ordinary person even though I have a developmental disorder it just doesn't make much difference really to be honest and that's just simple as that number four so when you go to visit health care settings whether it's a doctor's the dentist a hospital setting what is the biggest thing that makes you the most anxious about doing that things that make me the most anxious is noise and noise is one of these things that can be too overwhelming in a crowded waiting room I always am surrounded with crying children and people chatting a lot to themselves and it's just really stressful I really think that it puts me in a really awkward position and when the things become too much I feel like that I need to escape lock myself in a toilet or maybe just go outside just a little bit of fresh air but I'm worried that if I don't I would miss my appointment and another thing that makes me anxious is the time I'm sort of all right with it now but when I was younger I was obsessed of everything happening on time and if there was an appointment that was running late oh boy I would get really really stressed about that I feel that every time I come to the appointment my purpose for going there is to be on time just do the things that the doctor and nurses want to do and then just leave with a very happy smiling face and feeling very satisfied but with a lot of NHS hospitals and healthcare settings really that's not always the case because I know some bits can run over time and also a lot of people don't know how long will they have to wait for I feel that sometimes I really would like to know how long I'm going to be waiting for so I can get a little less panicky and a little less stressy and also sometimes going into a room full of people under one wing may feel very uncomfortable for me and this especially focuses on when I'm visiting a loved one in hospital I have been in many situations where I feel very very frightened when there is a whole crowd of people in one big room where someone I know is actually staying and this was the case of me when I was visiting my dad before she sadly passed away the room that she was in with all the other patients it made me feel very anxious and frightened because I didn't really know these people and I don't know what they were going to do however I would feel very anxious when I would meet my dad because I know in my eyes she seems very happy and healthy but when I saw her on her bed just feeling like a little bit not herself I was scared I really was scared and I didn't know what I was supposed to do and just looking at her made me think oh my goodness I tried to put on a brave face but I know that I wasn't talking most I was looking down a whole time just twiddling with my fingers and even though I had a little bit of encouragement to say something I just really couldn't I really couldn't even when I gave flowers to her that I picked from my garden before we went to the hospital I just really couldn't do it because I felt so scared and terrified but I didn't want to be that person who was really rude and just walk away but I feel that at the same time I just felt a little bit frightened and yeah that that was something that I really don't want to go through again and I know that it could be very extra stressful for my family as well all my friends but it just depends who I'm visiting and lastly but not least number five I would love to know and this is going to be a good one for everybody what can we all do as healthcare professionals to make your life a lot easier when you come to visit us what can we do to reduce that level of anxiety that you might experience let us know I have a huge long list of things but I'm only going to be talking about a few because I don't really want question five to drag on forever if I'm perfectly honest but I think for me and I had to have a lot of help with this one because I really wanted to get my parents and carers own opinions as well because their opinions really matter a lot just as much as my opinions and matters a lot as well and I know I'm not making any sense because this is a rambly sort of thing but I think the main idea of it is it's not just for me but it's everyone around me and this is our opinion on what we would like to see when we go into future appointments and future visits to see healthcare professionals the first point that I would really love to see is ones who are very polite and always have a smile it never really hurts to show a smile and it makes the experience so much better giving an estimate length of time and this is something that I've mentioned in the the previous few questions but um I feel that again it's very important because it will cause less stress for not just autistic patients but for their parents and carers also also it would be fantastic so fantastic if healthcare professionals would have a quiet room whilst the autistic patient is waiting to see their doctor their neurologist GP nurses etc and in my mind I would always love to see one quiet room on each floor level and this is because that if someone is having a meltdown or if they feel very stressed because of the atmosphere that's around them they really want to go to the room without traveling down a load of flight of stairs or going down an escalator and that will probably give them less chance of missing an appointment or just have a little bit of no knowledge at all in case the doctors and nurses or receptionist have to go looking for the patients and lastly giving information in a printable excessive way to support a dialogue and this is very important because sometimes I can't really hear what people are saying and rather listening I prefer something that's written on paper but only if it's in small small chunks and it could be something that's hugely large with a few words or with some pictures or with some other things as well like different shapes and colors now that's something that I would really love to see it just makes life a whole whole lot easier and it's very beneficial if it does happen I know it could be the same with so many people on the autistic spectrum but it really depends on what information that they want really and yeah that's basically it on that point but for me printed information would be so so good and that's another positive thing as well because I wouldn't have to rely on my parents or my carers most of the time because sometimes when I've done understand or feel worried I always have to look at them and that gives a little bit of hint of having to talk back to the people and saying that I have difficulty understanding and they have to listen to what their healthcare professional is saying before coming back to me just trying to explain it in a way that I can understand and also if there is printed information it would give me more independence in case that I haven't got carers or parents to come with me for an appointment so that's it thank you so much to says Francis for doing this video it's been absolutely amazing and I hope that it's really helped people out there to just get that little bit of knowledge and background about autism and what to do in future if you have a patient that suffers with autism and I just it's been a great collaboration I really enjoyed it says you're amazing for doing this so thank you again so so much if you haven't subscribed already subscribe to both channels says it's amazing to go and watch go and watch our channel I'm going to put all the details below so have a look at them and I'll see you next time