Doctors and how they come across

I remember Dad had an ashtray on his desk in the consulting room. He didn't smoke but some patients did. Hard to imagine!

M0nica

Our first GP was an alcoholic. You only saw him if desperate.

One of our previous GPs used to have a full glass of gin or vodka on his desk. He never examined patients and obviously found touching people distasteful.
One of our GPs told a colleague that he didn’t want to be a GP but his GP father pushed him in to it. Sadly he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and died in his 40’s. What a sad life!

Human are omnivores and everyone decides on what mix suits them or matches their ethical, religious or political beliefs.

I eat a healthy mixed diet, but all the meat I eat is from 'Pastture for Life' animals. Animals who graze outside all year as they would in the wild for the whole of their life on organic pasture. Only receive medication if they are ill and with strict slaughter rules. Expensive? yes, but we eat less.

I’m vegetarian but found it impossible to go vegan. I’m always trying to lose weight and never felt satisfied on vegan nosh minus the carbs, so just vegetables and salads.
Remember much vegan food is ultra processed. I’d rather eat butter and cheese than the artificial vegan versions.

I agree with you Nan99. I think if you've been vegetarian most of your life, you have a head start in staying healthy and it's not difficult to adjust to a vegan diet.

It's not difficult at all to live as a vegan, I disagree about high carb, low protein. We all eat food and the choices you make require you to consider what you are eating and what makes a balanced diet that suits your taste, your pocket and nutritional needs. You do need to take responsibility for the latter and of course you have to balance what you eat with how much activity you do. If you barely move and eat lots of cakes, well, the outcome is obvious!

I followed the Zoe programme several years ago, it was worth every penny. You get to wear a glucose monitor for 10 days so you can see how your body is reacting to blood sugar in foods, everyone is different and you learn what you should avoid and how to balance what you are eating.

Doctors know little about nutrition. I remember being vegetarian 40 years ago and the GP being horrified that I was eating tofu while breast feeding. It was a knee jerk response of course. Even the BBC website has oodles of good recipes including vegetarian and vegan dishes with plenty of information about nutrition.

Type 1 diabetes is not caused by food intake and even Type 2 diabetes has other risk factors, such as genetics, exercise, lack of sleep and long-term stress. It is quite difficult to eat a healthy vegan diet if diabetic because most vegan diets are high carb and low protein.

I am almost 80. I was a Vegetarian for over 25 years and am now a Vegan for 8 years for the animals and the horror they go through to get to your plate, and plant based for my eating.
At the moment on no meds, walk the dog three times a day.

Doctors don't talk about the food you eat. Animal flesh, eggs and dairy are not good for the body. I urge each of you to just try it for a month and see the difference. Dark leafy greens, Tofu, Tempeh, Fruit, beans, pulses, nuts and seeds.

So many people on YouTube where you can get recipes.
Nutrition.Org with Michael Gregor.
and his book on How not to die.

Plant Based Health Professionals UK

The Whole Food Plant based cooking Show.

Quote from a Doctor
We learn nothing about nutrition, claim medical students
25 March 2018

The health effects of nutrition and diet are not part of traditional training for medical students
Medical students say they currently learn almost nothing about the way diet and lifestyle affect health - and they should be taught more.

They say what they are taught is not practical or relevant to most of the medical problems they see in GP surgeries, clinics and hospitals.

A leading GP estimated that up to 80% of his patients had conditions linked to lifestyle and diet.

These included obesity, type 2 diabetes and depression.

Why does this lack of training matter?

This year the NHS will spend more than £11bn on diabetes alone - social care costs, time off work etc, will almost double that bill.

Food is our medicine and medicine is our food

My Dad was a GP in single handed practice. He had consulting hours afternoon and evening and saw all patients who turned up.

sazz1

My doctors here are absolutely fantastic. If I phone in the morning I get an appointment the same day. We have a sit and wait service starting around 5pm if it's urgent and with me it's always urgent as a chest infection is dangerous as I have poor lung function. So if all appointments are gone you wait maybe over an hour but you always see a GP. Receptionists and nurses are nice and friendly too. My GP did a blood test himself when I had an infection and rang and sent me to hospital a few hours later. The hospital was brilliant and very caring to all patients on my ward, RD&E Exeter.

We have a sit and wait service starting around 5pm if it's urgent

Back in the 1970s - my then GP surgery operated that system from 8am to mid-day, every day!

The afternoon was taken up with scheduled appointments and house-calls and other duties.

It was a different era.

My doctors here are absolutely fantastic. If I phone in the morning I get an appointment the same day. We have a sit and wait service starting around 5pm if it's urgent and with me it's always urgent as a chest infection is dangerous as I have poor lung function. So if all appointments are gone you wait maybe over an hour but you always see a GP. Receptionists and nurses are nice and friendly too. My GP did a blood test himself when I had an infection and rang and sent me to hospital a few hours later. The hospital was brilliant and very caring to all patients on my ward, RD&E Exeter.

I’ve lived here for over thirty years and have seen ‘my’ doctor twice. I don’t really care who I see but the old idea of a family doctor who knew you from Adam would be more effective than you being a complete stranger every time. The doctor has five minutes to find out what’s wrong, whether you’re capable of understanding and taking their advice, whether it’s economical for the NHS to treat you.
No wonder it feels as if the doctor is a robot.

M0nica

We fill a form in on line. No 8.00m rush.

Is there a 'cut-off' point with the online form you fill in?

Ours is available online from 8am onwards but at some point during the morning the system shuts down (you do get an online warning that it's about to happen) - and this could be as early as, say, 10am, depending on how many people have already submitted a form. Or it could be later. One never knows until it happens.

You can call - bypassing the form - but the receptionist will log all the info you give her onto one of these forms anyway and submit it along with the rest.

Once, when I had a cough which made me lose my voice, and my internet connection was on/off/on/off, I quickly typed up a very brief note (and it really was brief) for a friend to take down to the surgery to give to the receptionist in the hope she would accept that in place of a phone call, and log me online as if it were a phone call.

No dice. They are not allowed to accept written notes - it must be done over the phone. I was going to then call and cough my way through my symptoms, but just gave up and consulted Dr Google instead.

The next day, I had a call from the GP. My friend had left the note on the desk regardless and obviously someone decided to log it.

Our practice has an eform to complete. They get back within 48 hours tho I’ve always had a same day response
I’m currently on some long term treatment. I can make an appointment with reception with the same GP in a months time. This is working for me.
When my husband was given a stage four cancer diagnosis, palliative care only he could name the GP to care for him. She was so good over the six months from then till his death. She’s my preferred GP, inevitably everyone else wants her. Routine appointments wuth her a twelve week wait. If you’re on long term treatment she arranges to see you in a month

We have excellent young GPs who say they’re told how much more personal the family doctors practice was years agom

We fill a form in on line. No 8.00m rush.

Aveline

I was talking to a young GP today and she was saying how hard it is these days. Due to the triage system every patient is urgent. It's quite stressful. I don't know what happens to follow up appointments at her surgery. Maybe they're all with practice nurses.

Due to the triage system every patient is urgent.

Quite. That is a problem. And I don't envy GPs in that position.

I think follow-up appointments are given - in our surgery, if you've seen a GP or practice nurse and they want to see you again, they tell you to make an appointment for x weeks on your way out. That is allowed.

Basically our surgery has dealt with the 8am telephone lottery - by adding another lottery option.

I was talking to a young GP today and she was saying how hard it is these days. Due to the triage system every patient is urgent. It's quite stressful. I don't know what happens to follow up appointments at her surgery. Maybe they're all with practice nurses.

MissAdventure

I didn't even know exactly what it was when i filled it out.
I'd vaguely heard of Anima, but had no idea where the info went, or if it was a virtual assistant that was going to try and pack me off to a and e.
It goes directly to the gp, then?

Yes, I think it does Miss A - hence the 'cut-off' point when the safe number of requests that the surgery can cope with that day is reached.

I think you get a few minute's warning when it's about to shut down completely, I'm not sure.

In my surgery, after that point is reached it means that's it for the day - you are advised, if you telephone the surgery, to consult 111 if you need immediate attention - or go to A&E if the situation if life-threatening.

The problem with this system - as I see it anyway - is that very urgent/urgent/and situations where a future appointment would suffice - are all competing at the same time because that is the only access we have. You simply cannot book a future appointment with a GP - not even weeks ahead. That system is closed.

I need an appointment, but it is not urgent. So I am going to consult Dr Google and attempt to treat myself. It's just so much easier. I will know within a week or two whether I've been successful (and it is not a complicated matter).

Alternatively, I could call 111, and have done in the past. But each time, the end result has been that I should go to A&E... maybe because of my age, I dunno. Which I did, but it wasn't necessary and I just took up time and space from someone else who probably needed to be there more than me.

Aveline

I'm always startled to get texts from my GP practice. I don't remember ever giving them my mobile phone number.

You might be pleased one day - at least they are aware of you.

I didn't even know exactly what it was when i filled it out.
I'd vaguely heard of Anima, but had no idea where the info went, or if it was a virtual assistant that was going to try and pack me off to a and e.
It goes directly to the gp, then?

MissAdventure

I used Anima last time i needed help (i wasn't even sure what help I needed)

Luckily it got me through to an appointment with the practice nurse, who, when she'd finished with me, went to see nice gp, and he fitted me onto his list.

I think Anima is actually designed to identify the help you might need. From that aspect, it's a jolly good system.

I've only used it once (my internet connection in the morning can be quite glitchy) but if I remember correctly, it asks you questions that are, presumably, 'red-flags' to a GP. From your descriptions of your symptoms, the GP can work out the help you might need.

... and in your case obviously did

I used Anima last time i needed help (i wasn't even sure what help I needed)

Luckily it got me through to an appointment with the practice nurse, who, when she'd finished with me, went to see nice gp, and he fitted me onto his list.

MissAdventure

Its roughly an eight week wait to see our nice new gp.
Not ideal.

Gosh no! Miss A, that is far from ideal!

I mean, if you have symptoms that you think can wait for 8 weeks before being decoded - but that's a gamble.

Our surgery has solved that problem by removing the option to actually make a future appointment - the patient can no longer request one. Every request has to be filtered through either the 8am telephone-call lottery, or 'Anima' the online version of the phone call. As that is the only portal to the surgery, the traffic flow is huge and soon reaches the point of maximum capacity.

The end result is that patients with urgent conditions or who have worrying symptoms are having to compete unintentionally with those who could wait for a couple of weeks.

At the risk of being labelled as a complainer, I'd say this is not an ideal system.

WithNobsOnIt

My GP Practice has 25,000 patients..
I have been with them for nearly 40 years.

I found the two older Doctors,now left or retired. to be rude and arrogant and just in medicine to advance their careers in Primary Care.

I am still sorting out two medical conditions that were misdiagnosed or ignored by them over twenty years ago

They were rude and arrogant and patients were just treated as research fodder to advance their careers in medicine, medical education and Primary Care.

The female Doctor was very well in with being a Consultant to NICE and post COVID Research. She also received an OBE a couple of years ago.

The other is now a Regional Director of a National well known medical organisation.

Another other Senior Doctor did not send off several.referal.letters and it has taken me over two years to sort out this oversight and get appointments.

My medical Practice now has a lot of female Salaried GP's who are much better than the old brigade. More caring and down to earth and not full of themselves.

That is.my experience

I wonder if we're in the same area as I read my practice has 25,000 patients?

To get an appt I have to start phoning at 8 a.m. but even starting a minute before, I find I am number ?? on the list! Hard to get an appt for that day. The lady Dr I try to see is wonderful - comes out to the waiting area to call you in, lovely smile, chatty, nice to see you, 'what can I do for you?'. Doesn't rush and listens to what seems to be the problem. She does only work 3 days a week in the surgery, but does other NHS work the rest of the time. We do get a large number of locums.

LaCrepescule

Our lovely family doctor of yesteryear was terrifying and traumatised the whole
family. I can still see his cold eyes peering over those half-moon glasses at us. The system is much better now and I wish people would stop complaining.

But 'the system' varies so much, depending on your postcode.