Telephone consultation for medical review

It’s dreadful, these consultations should be face to face.
So many things can be missed in a telephone consultation.

GP practices are putting so much effort into avoiding actually seeing patients.

I recently wrote to my GP and hand delivered the letter, I had been unable to get through on the phone and my emails had been ignored!
In the letter I politely asked to be seen, it was to be the first time in over 2 years, I listed all the routine tests that should have been done and highlighted a mix up they hade made on my meds.
I got an appointment the next day.

I would try the same.

Germanshepherdsmum

A great shame. I fear so many people just won’t bother to try to consult a doctor, or things won’t be picked up in telephone or online consultations. Doctors found time to see us before covid - now they seem to have found a way of not doing so, whilst still, as I understand it, being paid by the NHS on a per capita basis. What have we come to?

Don't blame the GPs. The initiative has come from the bosses (England, at least - don't know about other countries).

Thanks Dickens and Doodledog. I have made a note to ask about MART. I don’t mean to make a fuss about my condition when others are so much worse off, but receiving the letter today brought home to me just how much things have changed - in addition to the pharmacy at the surgery now needing seven working days’ notice to dispense repeat prescriptions but not saying so on the website; Lord help the person who doesn’t know that and hopes to pick up their medication just before going on holiday … they seem to have run out of excuses now.

I do blame the GPS growstuff. They’re self employed contractors.

New normal yes I’ve had the same. They ask how your doing all of the questions you usually get asked. The only difference for me was I didn’t have to blow into anything just collated the questions and that was it.

My telephone review is this week, I was asked if I wanted a face to face, as my Asthma has been stable since March I said a phone conversation would be fine.

You can buy a peak flow monitor to keep a check on your Asthma.

My Annual health review is next week and I have an Asthma form to take with me, that’s a face to face with an NP not my GP.

Germanshepherdsmum

I do blame the GPS growstuff. They’re self employed contractors.

Yes, they are (or most of them), but they're funded by the government, which is pulling their strings and providing targets. Increasingly, they are employees of corporate organisations.

My son has had his last 2 asthma reviews by telephone. It didn't amount to much more than 'are you ok?' He won't make a fuss, replied 'yes' and that's it for another year. My husband has had his sciatica physiotherapy appointment over the phone. 'Can you lean backwards more than x degrees?' How on earth would he know if I hadn't been there to say 'no' you're way less than that. I on the other hand have had two face to face appointments with a GP because I got lucky with a nurse practitioner who referred me to the on-call doctor. He's still monitoring my condition with bi-monthly face to face appointments.

We have a friend who has been sent an appointment date for a phone consultation with his podiatrist.

I’m fortunate in that my asthma is very very mild, only get a bit wheezy in harvest time.

My last two reviews have been phone ones, she asked me to describe how I use my inhaler.

Suits me, as I feel a bit of a fraud being down as an asthma sufferer, but would want a proper consultation if I had it badly.

At the same time as my asthma deteriorated I was found to have Graves Disease (a thyroid condition). I saw the endocrinologist who diagnosed it before lockdown, but after that the appointments have all been with a different consultant by telephone. After 18 months of quite toxic drugs I had an appointment for radiotherapy that would have ‘nuked’ my thyroid and left me dependent on replacement hormones for life, based on telephone conversations with someone I never met. I had regular blood tests, but after the initial conversation nobody examined me, checked my eyes, measured my thyroid, monitored my weight gain or did any of the things that would have happened in a routine face-to-face appointment. I was uneasy about getting the radiotherapy on this basis, so suggested that before having it I come off the cocktail of drugs I was taking, to see how my thyroid would cope on its own, and after a difficult month or so it stabilised. I am now being monitored but am off the list for the radiotherapy. Telephone appointments are not in all cases an adequate substitute for seeing a doctor.

It depends on the practice. Our doctors is a six week wait for call from a doctor to ascertain if he should see you, answer no, they are all sitting in their offices with empty waiting rooms. Why are they a special case, everyone else working. A telephone Ashma or Diabetic check is just laughable but serious. Accident and Emergency have been carrying them throughout. Are they waiting until they can retire on excellent pensions? I can see it going the American route paying to see them. Hard luck if you can't afford it.

I feel that GPS get to see more people so get more money. I had a telephone medicine review with the nurse practitioner. Basically everything ok? Me - yes thanks. Then told that I needed to go to the surgery for a blind test with nurse practitioner. So 2 for 1 from their perspective. Just wasting time from mine.

If you can’t be given a peak flow meter prescription then you can, as Oopsadaisy has said, purchase one. There are some at around £10 on Amazon.

That’s a shocking story, Doodledog. Up until now I had always thought my surgery was good, but then I rarely ask for an appointment. I had a face to face blood pressure review earlier this year, which obviously they couldn’t do by phone as I don’t have (or need) a bp monitor, why the same isn’t happening with asthma I have no idea. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

I was asked to attend to give a blood sample for hypertension, I was phoned and asked to do it again a fortnight later whilst monitoring my BP four times a day with a machine at home and also to bring in a urine sample why? couldn't tell me.
I then got a LETTER signed by my GP telling me I had another ongoing health issue. Still no phone call. Do I phone and ask for a telephone appointment or wait and see what happens.?
Is it the fault of the G.PS or of the circumstances they are expected to work with now? Why are so many leaving after training and saying it was not the job they or their patients expected of them? They appear to be administrators not practising DR's. Surgeries are training nurses to do the job of what in the past been the G.P's job.
Are we expecting too much or is the way of the future. A friend made me laugh when she got a telephone conseltation about a hemeroid problems she had said how do I show you down the phone.
All we can do is wait and see. Which really annoys me.