GP Appointments

2 or 3 weeks for a telephone conversation here, you have to wait in the whole day! To actually SEE a doctor, well, you're likely to be dead by then - and I nearly was. Only my friend knowing the difference between coma and sleep saved my life

It really doesn't surprise me that it is more difficult to get an appointment with a GP. Everywhere we travel around here in the south-east new houses are being built on every available piece of ground, not "affordable" housing of course. So the infrastructure is being stretched to the limit.

We have a notorious practice; this estate has over 3000 houses and our practice has another similar-sized branch nearer to Manchester (the two biggest and most poverty-stricken estates for miles round). Between them, there are only 4 doctors (I understand one on duty at each practice at a time). Give them their due, they normally see patients within 2-3 days, but they are not very good and now we have a new practice locally with a much better reputation, the old one is losing patients very rapidly. Sadly, they are seriously lacking in technological know-how, so you have to get past the receptionists, who want to know why you want to see the doctor before booking you an appointment, we can't speak to a doctor by phone, we can't order a repeat prescription by phone (they only started handling electronic prescriptions three weeks ago, so if there was a problem with medication, you often had serious problems). The new surgery has e-mail prescription ordering, on-line appointment booking, including Saturday morning appointments, etc, so is infinitely better.

Being in a village the practice here has a pharmacy and repeat prescriptions can be ordered by phone or on line. Doctor appointments to see a specific doctor take three weeks but by phoning early morning can see an available doctor. Non urgent cases are dealt with by nurses. As I am elderly if I don't visit the surgery for three months they phone to see if I am OK.

The shortage of GPs is only going to get worse, with one third of them due to retire within the next five years. General Practice is not seen as an attractive option for medical students, the excessive paperwork and target work takes them further away from actually treating patients, these numbers are not going to be replaced any time soon.

GPs who run telephone triage systems successfully can make a huge difference, but it takes extra hard work, enthusiasm and dedication for some months to put in a successful triage system. You should be able to speak to a GP within and hour, and get your presciption, or if necessary an appointment, the same day.

Your local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) has a duty to monitor the access GP surgeries provide, and if yours is not performing, you can ask them for help. But it is really difficult in inner city areas, which understandably are less popular places for GPs to want to work in and hence drastically understaffed.

Repeat dispensing is something that you should discuss with your GP when you eventually get to see them. You can ask for one year's worth of prescriptions to be given to your local, dedicated pharmacist, and then you only need to contact your GP once a year for a review appointment (which can be done over the phone) in plenty of time. If you need a BP check as part of your review, many surgeries and pharmacies have machines you can use yourself, just give the reading to a receptionist to enter into your record.

Until this Government accecpts that the NHS is standing on the edge of a precipice, and continued underfunding will push it over into disaster, we will get nowhere. There are enough British student applicants to medical schools, but not nearly enough of them are given places.

I personally would happily give 1p on income tax if it could be utterly ringfenced to provide for the NHS, we spend far less on our healthcare than most other countries. Much rather that than private companies taking over, purely focused on profit.

But no Government has the courage to suggest that. What do you think?

With a growing population we should be looking at expanding GP surgeries not coping with losing so many GPs to early retirement and medical students not choosing it as a career to fill the gaps.

Some radical thinking is needed one way or another re the whole NHS format but I am pessimistic that it will happen. It will be another case of papering over an increasingly creaking service I suspect.

Why is anyone surprised by full Doctors surgeries, full hospitals, full schools etc., the population of this Country has gone up by millions in a relitavely short time, and under current arrangements is set to go up by millions more. Nothing can keep pace with this change.

0h dear, time to confess that I am one of those "evil dragons" as we are presumed to be, who work as a receptionist in a doctor's practice.

My tip is firstly to really find out how your own practice works - don't go by hearsay. As you can see from above each practice organises their appointments differently and never presume that "can't get an appt for 3 weeks" really is the case.

In our practice a third of the appointments for each day are available to be booked in advance either by directly via the receptionist or on line, and these tend to get booked up about 2-3 weeks ahead of time. The rest are released on the day at 8.00 in the morning which admittedly is a dreadful time for many people to start ringing repeatedly before they are able to get through and if we are short of doctors on the day may get fully booked within 10 minutes - there are several of us answering the phone at that time and we can each book 2 appointments every minute. Each doctor can only see 6 people in an hour remember and can't see patients all through the day as there is so much paperwork for them to do too. BUT if it really is urgent an emergency appointment is ALWAYS available but it is up to the patient to let us know that it is vital they see a doctor that day (we are not mind readers, though that would be so handy in our job and we are often presumed to be so!)

Another tip: If your practice is similar and you are having to ring in the morning and have difficulty getting through - NEVER use the BT ring back service. We have several lines so we can all be answering the phones at the same time - "Ring back" gets confused with this system so does not work as you would expect and only leads to disappointment. Unfortunately the only way is to keep hitting the redial button.

Please don't think that the receptionists only want to turn people away - we hate it when we can't give everyone who asks an appointment that day. It also works the other way, you would be surprised by how many days we have appointments unused, but some people will still tell us how they couldn't get through and have been unable to get an appointment for x number of days! Others just don't try because they presume they won't be able to and leave it until it does become a medical emergency.

And if you do book an appointment please attend or cancel in good time to have it rebooked. I was shocked to see how many people don't show up for appointments. (another reason why many practices only release appointments on the day as there is less chance of people forgetting them.)

If you are unhappy at how your surgery works, it is always worth writing to the practice manager if you have any ideas as to how to improve it for everyone. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a perfect system that pleases all of the people all of the time.

Well put, Grannaby and thank you for the tips.

With the GP service under so much strain, it really is shocking that many appointments are missed and therefore wasted.

Our GP practice is generally excellent, but when you see a doctor and he/she wants you to have blood taken you have to make an appointment to see a nurse. Whatever happened to doctors taking blood? Only takes a minute and would save time and money for everyone. On another ppoint, there is a notice in the waiting room listing how many people failed to turn up for appointments. Does no one get contacted to ask why? The numbers never get any less. The surgery will text a reminder of your appointment time if you ask them.