Medical Transition - The Mechanics of it all - Assessments - part 4 - the NHS First assessment

When i decided that transitioning was the only  practicable way forward  for me due to the impact my gender dysphoria  had, I did my research on waiting times  before deciding which GIC I was going to be referred to  see my post on Services and chose Sheffield.

The (English) GICs have been nationally commissioned  since 2013/4  and  if you are registered with an NHS England GP you can be referred to any of the 7 services in England , Scotland has 3 or 4 services of it's own ,some are  nationally commissioned others take from specific health boards,  NI has a GIC of it's own and poor old Wales was lagging right behind and was stuck with an 1980s style  referral system and didn't actually have it's own GIC until very recently , which is just getting going - there was a separate referral and funding stream for NHS wales patients to be seen at Charing Cross.

 The GICs   are supposedly  within the scope of  the '18 week  referral to treatment' target,  none of them is anywhere  near  that , neither is GIDS.

Sheffield is currently the least worst wait and their wait is approximately 60 weeks from  referral to first  assessment , 4 of  the other services - Newcastle, Charing Cross, Nottingham and Leeds advising  waits of 20-24 MONTHS, Daventry's wait is still approaching 3 years and the Laurels seems to have some sort of split waiting list due to staffing issues  where people report  their  plan of care isn't actually fully put in place until around 4 years after they  were originally referred.

But on with the actual topic of this post... On 2nd of January  2019 I had my first assessment appointment at Sheffield GIC,  i'd previously been  for an information session  in the summer of 2018 roughly half way between referral and being seen.

My appointment on was schedules to be up to 90 minutes long and was a Diagnostic assessment with Sarah C, their Nurse clinician, the format of this assessment  very much followed a pretty similar format to that Stuart Lorimer's assessment did back in march...  the main differences for me was now being in a position to talk about the positive changes to both mind and body from beginning medical transition.