Scaling back GP care

With regard to much less important services, BUT - have you tried to speak to energy companies, internet companies, HM Tax Office, HM Passport Office, local government, your own bank, car insurance companies .....etc etc....
Few of them have phone services at all currently, but people aren’t on this forum wondering what they’re doing and complaining.

maddyone with the greatest of respect you have told us time and time again how hard your daughter and son in law work and I understand your stance on this point. I would be proud of a daughter and son in law that work so hard. But this is only part of the whole picture as it appears from many of the experiences on here that not all surgeries are perhaps as committed. Some people are really going through a very worrying time in respect of their health and many illnesses are not being diagnosed. We have all had different experiences some positive and some negative.

I am supposed to have my bloods done twice a year plus BP checks...nothing .
I have been unable to see my Doctor now since January I have had problems with bp meds (tried 8 in 14 months) and currently stopped taking them the last one resulted in swelling from head to toe .I got to speak to a nurse on the phone and she suggested I take one I already had problems with...I have given up.

Sorry! That should have been directed at Debohun

Well said Ilovecheese I have seen teachers criticised during lock down and watched my poor neighbour, an infant teacher, wearing herself to rags looking after the children of essential workers, doing lessons online and supporting frazzled parents trying to home teach.

GO surgeries are getting it too. They are on the phone at all hours doing telephone consultations, trying to run surgeries wearing full PPE all day, keeping their staff and patients safe and supporting people whose hospital appointments are cancelled or postponed.

They need our praise, not niggling.

It’s a bit like all hell breaking out behind the scenes in 24hrs in A&E on TV the other night and a couple sitting in the waiting area complaining that as it was very quiet why were they being kept waiting!
Perhaps those (constantly) complaining would like to make upfront payments for all their consultations and treatments........

debohunXL5 you have had a terrible time and you have my sympathies, so don't think I am referring to you when I say that

I don't understand the attitude of some people who seem to assume that doctors and teachers are basically just lazy and do not want to do that job that they have trained for years to do.

Grumbling because a GP was wearing PPE! Really!

When some of you say that you don't know what your surgery has been doing you are speaking nothing but the truth, you don't know what they have been doing.

50,000 and more people have died of a new virus over the last nine months or so, how can it possibly not disrupt the normal running of the health service.

Apparently, they are going to train admin staff to give the jabs (at our practice, the care assistants already do it). They are also going to call in retired nurses and other volunteers.

The organisation is going to be a absolute nightmare and it doesn’t help when they are criticised.

Our surgery is basically non-existent. Have not received my 6 monthly diabetes check up for nearly a year now. Cannot get an appointment if urgent. Have to go through NHS care line who will contact surgery if they feel it is important. You will then get a telephone appointment with a doctor if you are lucky. This to me is ridiculous. How can you be diagnosed correctly without face to face interview? Sorry but I do feel we are going backwards with health care from GP’s.

aepgirl I’m sorry if I misunderstood, but I thought you said you’ve just seen your GP and he/she was wearing PPE. So why say the GPs are nowhere to be seen? I don’t understand.
Also, do you honestly expect a doctor to see you without PPE?

Sorry, I did not mean aepgirl I actually meant vickymeldrew.
Thank you for your lovely, supportive post.

Thank you f77ms and Mirren and aepgirl.
I despair at times. We have a wonderful NHS, delivering high quality care to the population, every day of the year. In this difficult time of Covid19, when the whole of life has changed for everyone, we cannot expect GP surgeries to continue exactly as they did before. If your GP isn’t available, and most are, he or she may have volunteered to work alongside hospital staff delivering care for Covid patients, or he or she may be working at the Covid Hub like my son in law, or they may be giving palliative care to the dying in care homes like my daughter. I have already listed what GPs are doing so I won’t list it again, but you can be totally sure that your GP is not on an extended holiday and has not abandoned their practice to the nurse practitioners. GPs are working.

I do sometimes wonder about the system that provides care at the point of need, with no charge. It seems to produce a sense of entitlement. Essentially I agree with free care at the point of need, but this thread has made me wonder.

I wonder what the GPs have been doing since March. My practice has 3 surgeries in its group with at least 15 GPs. However, trying to get an appointment is next to impossible. The receptionists say that we can have a telephone consultation, but not for 3 weeks, or see a clinician, again about a 3-week wait. I did get an appointment with my GP - I don't know how he managed to walk with the amount of PPE he was wearing, and I was in and out in about 30 seconds. Drs and nurses are working their backsides off in the hospitals but our GPs are nowhere to be seen.

What a moany miserable thread (most of) this is! We are in the middle of a pandemic with the wonderful NHS free at the point of delivery. There are huge logistical problems for our GP surgeries to tackle. We are not aware of all the difficulties they face or the conflicting demands on their time.
It must be extremely frustrating for those medical staff doing their very best for patients to be complained about so much.
I think some on this site need to kinder and try to understand that GPs are not sitting around with their feet up!

My husband became very ill suddenly in September. He was breathing badly and so I rang 999. Paramedics came quickly but he was sick all over our bed and I only had time to cover it before they came. Paramedics were brilliant took him in just after midnight. 4am in the morning I was rang by A & E doctor to say he was being taken to ICU and put on a ventilator. I couldn't wait to ring ICU in the morning but waited until 7am. ICU doctor told me that husband had a chest infection which turned to pneumonia. After being Intubated he had a heart attack, his organs were failing and his blood pressure was in his boots and he needed adrenalin. They said that if he arrested they would not perform CPR as his heart was in such bad shape. He has had three other heart attacks in the past and numerous stents. They took him off the ventilator after 4 days, which was amazing but then with signs of a stroke, slurred speech difficulty in swallowing and his right arm unable to move it was another hurdle. After an MRI scan it was established that he had an infarq to his brain stem and he had had two before also. He was transferred to a cardiac unit at another hospital. He spent another week and a half there where his arm improved his speech almost came back to normal and his swallowing improved. He was discharge on 29/09/20. Since he has been home he has been very ill. I have had to call an ambulance on 3 occasions and he has spent another 3 days in hospital. There is no doubt the hospitals have saved his life but the care from his GP surgery has not been so good. When I have requested an appointment with the surgery I have been fobbed off by Nurse practitioners. It took 3 days of speaking to the surgery to finally get them to send an ambulance. They tried to fob me off with anti sickness tablets for him. I had to press the point that I though my husband was going to die before my eyes if action wasn't taken. Slight exaggeration but I needed him to be investigated before he died of starvation and dehydration as he couldn't keep anything down.
The system at out surgery is:-
1. Ring the number get recorded message surgery is closed
2. Continue to press redial until recorded spiel about coronavirus
3 Now 2 mins after opening time 'You are 15 in the queue'
How can that be?
4. Speak to receptionist. There are no appointments left ring in the morning.
Or doctor or nurse practitioner will call you back.
5. 4 or 5 hours later called back. Still cannot have a face to face but telephone consultation.

Now my husband has an infected leg. Prescribed antibiotics but wrong ones as he is allergic to penicillin. Second trip to the pharmacy to collect new prescription.
I could go on and on and I already have so thank you for your patience if you haven't got bored and stopped reading but it is good for me to get it out. I have had numerous other problems with the surgery which I wont go into but I have been so frustrated and feel like pulling my hair out as times. Thanks for reading this.

Mirren

I've had to use my local surgery for a very minor thing during this pandemic and they were wonderful. Not everyone thinks you are all slacking.

Missfoodlove

Ditto to everything you said!

I couldn't believe what I was reading! If our Surgery scaled back any more it would close. It practically has anyway.

As it is I always go to my Pharmacist for the flu jab (which is not a vaccination).

Just in case anyone was concerned she does know that lem sip has paracetamol in it, and knows how much she an take.

My mothers GP totally useless. She is 94 and has been ill for weeks with really sore throat and a very bad cold possibly flu. She is “on the list” for a home visit flu jab but they don’t know when. She is totally fatigued, cannot sleep and put off phoning the gp as she was aware how busy they were. She finally called yesterday and after listening to her and asking lots of questions about who she had contact with was told to give it another week, if no better, call again. He was treating her as a suspect COVID case, she is housebound and doesn’t go out at all. I visited months ago when we were not in lockdown and he asked a lot of questions about me also as if it were my fault she was ill. I am over 100 miles away, if I were nearer I would try to get her to the GP but she thinks he is a waste of time and is carrying on with lem sip @nd paracetamol.

Agree that GP practices vary in efficiency from area to area but I honestly can't fault mine. Since February I've been contacted for a personal telephone consultation with my GP twice; the Practice nurse has phoned me regarding blood pressure checks and a referral to the orthopaedic department at the hospital was chased up assiduously by my GP resulting in me being seen quite quickly. Any repeat prescriptions are completed within the day. I have no complaints.

I think it's down to individuals. Recently a GP at our practice put me on blood pressure tablets and said he'd telephone after 3 weeks to see how I was getting on. (The pharmacist at Boots telephoned twice.) When I had only 4 pills left I e-mailed the practice. The GP e-mailed back and asked me to send in BP measurements for 5 consecutive days and also asked me to have blood and urine tests. But it was the best part of a week before the new prescription came through. Not life or death I know, but pretty lax I thought.
The nurse at the practice who analysed the urine sample yesterday texted me within the hour to say that it was clear. Well done her.

I speak as I find. Our GP practice - who in normal times weren’t always the best have done brilliantly during COVID. Telephone consultations available quite quickly and when speaking to my husband about a couple of problems recently called him round to the surgery same day to check him over and sent him for tests and followed up when he still felt unwell a week later. I believe they are all working really hard and the reception staff too who often put up with people who are angry and impatient.

Much to my surprise I have had two skin cancer ops during lockdown and the hospital was marvellous I felt very safe. However I have another medical issue and contacted my GP on the hospital’s advice but was told they do not do face to face and I was to go on e-consult and send photographs. I spent over an hour uploading photos and then answered various questions. The last question I got to was “Are you taking immunosuppressants?” When I answered yes it immediately logged
me out and told me to ring 111! I contacted the surgery and they said that this was happening to a lot of people and to do it by email. Another hour later and their email rejected all the photos. Rang again and they say there’s nothing they can do. Disappointed with the service and worried for all the immunosuppressed in our area as they will be unable to e-consult. How do people manage if they haven’t got a computer?

The problem in my practice seems to be getting through to an actual person on the phone. Whether this is deliberate or not I don’t know. This is the usual procedure:
1. Phone number wait a while to then hear a long list of recorded Covid instructions lasting several minutes.
2. Wait to speak to receptionist again several minutes.
3. Explain problem to receptionist and why you need to see doctor.
4. Wait again to be put through to triage nurse and explain reasons for wanting to see/speak to doctor.
5. If nurse thinks you warrant seeing or speaking to doctor you are then phoned by doctor to check whether you do warrant face to face appointment or problem can be solved over phone.
6. Some friends have said that they have been told to go to A&E when normally it would be a problem dealt with by the surgery.
On the odd occasion I have visited the surgery to collect prescription the waiting room has been empty even in the morning.
I am not being judgemental here but it does beg the question some posters have asked about what some surgeries really are doing and whether they are using Covid as an excuse. Alternatively some surgeries seem to be providing an excellent service to their patients. Perhaps in future there should be closer monitoring of GP practices so that those doing well can be accredited as doing so. However, I suspect the BMA would not support this action.

I've had a couple of medical appointments recently. Both have stressed not to arrive early. Five minutes early for 1st and two for 2nd. On the first one (hospital) I was kept waiting for fifteen minutes without sign of anyone leaving and the second one (local surgery) directed me to 'wait outside until called'. That was eleven minutes and, again, not a sign of anyone departing. Fortunately it was only damp but not cold. Is this a 'caring' service? When I was escorted in, the place was locked up like a fortress. Amazing. On the latter, I have not a moment's doubt the same rules would have been applied had there been a blizzard outside. Have to say, in both cases, the treatment was exemplary. Maybe it's an administrative weakness? Don't know. Presumably the doctors know something of what goes on front of house.