Bonkers new rule at our GP surgery

Can only get an online telephone appointment with a nurse practitioner at our surgery. If you want to see a GP you have to phone at 8 am and get in a queue, maybe for 40 mins and guess what? All appointments gone. They will suggest that you phone 111. 111 may say phone GP back as they have a duty of care. This week I phoned and was told no GP but paramedic available who could deal with minor illness?? Except my need was not minor. No wonder A and E are overwhelmed.

I think I can shed more light on the reasons for the shortage of GPS.

To be fully qualified as a GP takes 10 years and a lot of debt. Many women are attracted to the role but just as they qualify they enter peak marriage/ childbearing age. When they return to work they don't want to work full time so only do a few sessions a week.

This leaves the surgery with a massive predicament because they don't share the additional tasks and responsibilities that full time GPS have. Newly qualified GPS can also earn more as locums and with online services.

Young GPs seem to be choosing practices where they can afford to live and with easy transport. My own practice invests heavily in the training of GPs but it's one way traffic.....once qualified they need to live somewhere cheaper and also leave their university hospital and return to their home areas.

My practice has eight part time GPs and three full time for 16000 patients. With that workload it's no wonder that they have a high turnover and permanently advertise for staff.

Our NHS no longer works....

How do other businesses manage the fact that some workers want to do less hours?

It's quite a normal occurrence, surely?

We use the NHS app to book appointments, order repeat prescriptions etc. It helps keep the phone lines free for those who can't or won't use the Internet.

Maddy it's possible to comment without being rude.
Even if people know there are problems in GP practices, it doesn't stop them feeling exasperated with it. And some are getting very bad service. I can still get on the day face to face appointments by phoning. My daughter has great difficulty ever getting to see a doctor, even with sick children. It's unacceptable.

HousePlantQueen

I agree, it is bonkers.

To spend 40 minutes on the phone only to be told to send a letter so the surgery can phone to make an appointment is utterly ridiculous.

I thought our surgery appointments system was difficult enough but yours sounds worse.

Until Covid, it was straightforward to get a gp appointment. My erstwhile excellent surgery could often offer one within the next few days, otherwise a week or two if I wanted to see my named GP. You saw the doctor at the surgery, where they could examine lumps and bumps if necessary.
Why the change now. Have so many GPs suddenly left en masse since 2020?
I was curious so asked at my surgery and none of the doctors have left so what has changed, why is it suddenly impossible to have a face to face appointment, while other practices are more or less back to normal.

maddyone

Sorry, but what’s Brexit got to do with it?

Nothing, surely?

Our new receptionist doesn't seem to have had any training, talking to her on the phone was bizarre.
She didn't know the names of routine medications, denied they had a certain doctor at the practice (oddly, I'd only spoken to that GP the week before) because she knew all the GPs only by their first names which most patients won't know. "Oh, do you usually see Lucy, Maggie or Gem"?

silverlining48 why indeed, I fear we may never get a truthful answer, and as long as everyone plays along with the Covid excuse and doesn’t make a fuss then this is how things will continue and can only worsen.

And the government have tried to encourage more doctors to train as GPs BUT THEY DON’T WANT TO BE GPs

The one I saw (who apparently doesn't work at our surgery 🤔) is a trainee and should be taking her exams shortly. So 🤞

Well of course Callistemon some doctors do want to be GPs, and thank goodness for that otherwise we wouldn’t have any GPs at all. However I do know from the horse’s mouth that fewer doctors are choosing to train as GPs and that means that the shortage over time will become more acute. Many GPs are already retiring or are approaching retirement and many young doctors just do not want to become GPs. I think any thinking person should ask themselves why this is the case, but actually it seems many people do not want to wonder what the problem is, but would rather criticise instead.

I changed my GP Practice some seven or eight years ago. The Practice I attended rather infrequently amalgamated with three other practices and was taken over by a group called Vine which oversaw the whole group. When that happened it became impossible to see a doctor and you had to be very determined in order to see a nurse or paramedic. As I suffer from asthma, and at that time was having rather bad symptoms and needed to have oral steroids regularly, I became disillusioned and decided to change my practice. I was recommended a nearby practice, although it was further from my house, and so I approached them and they took both myself and my husband on as patients. They have been so much better and I always receive treatment on the rare occasions that I need it. I have found the NHS App very useful for making telephone appointments and ordering repeat prescriptions.

growstuff showed up thread that being persistent brings results. Complaining on Gransnet or any other online forum will not bring about any change. It just makes people sound like complainers.

nadateturbe yes you’re right, it is possible to comment without being rude. However some posters sound like complaining about GPs is their life’s mission. This is hardly the first thread where complaints about GPs are aired and it won’t be the last. Perhaps I’ll feel less like responding to these posters negatively when they in turn stop constant complaints about GPs and make at least some effort to understand the situation.

People will only stop complaining when we get the service we pay for. How do you expect people to feel when they are suffering ill health and not getting the help they need?
Understanding doesn't make them feel better.

maddyone

nadateturbe yes you’re right, it is possible to comment without being rude. However some posters sound like complaining about GPs is their life’s mission. This is hardly the first thread where complaints about GPs are aired and it won’t be the last. Perhaps I’ll feel less like responding to these posters negatively when they in turn stop constant complaints about GPs and make at least some effort to understand the situation.

Rather than being rude to people who are worried sick about their health, maybe you should direct your anger towards those who are responsible for the under-resourcing.

Do you think complaining will make them better then? They should complain to their MP if they feel strongly enough. Understanding is important in my opinion. How do you suggest that the current GP shortage is solved? I would tentatively suggest fewer hours and fewer patients per doctor. But if we can’t attract sufficient doctors to train as GPs, that’s impossible. Any other suggestions?

Maddyone I was persistent because an arrogant GP refused to believe me. My breast cancer was picked up six months later by a routine scan, even though I had known all along that something was wrong. With some difficulty, I contacted the GP practice manager, who initially tried to fob me off. It wasn't until the practice received a letter from me threatening legal action that I was finally granted an interview with the senior partner. There is now a note on my records (I've seen it) that I refuse to be seen by the partner who misdiagnosed me. I received an official apology, but decided not to sue.

Nobody should need to be as persistent as I was to receive basic care.

Thank you for your suggestion growstuff.
There is an ongoing issue of pay in general practice, not just now as there are issues of pay with many professions, but I’m aware that the issue of pay has been rumbling for about ten years or more. The level of pay has been seriously eroded over time and GPs are not happy about it. Maybe that needs to be looked at properly too.

maddyone

Do you think complaining will make them better then? They should complain to their MP if they feel strongly enough. Understanding is important in my opinion. How do you suggest that the current GP shortage is solved? I would tentatively suggest fewer hours and fewer patients per doctor. But if we can’t attract sufficient doctors to train as GPs, that’s impossible. Any other suggestions?

People do understand!! It doesn't help them if they are seriously ill. Writing to MPs, if they're Conservative, won't do any good. Places for medical schools are oversubscribed. The problem is the government places unrealistic demands on GPs. It's not the patients' fault.

People should remember next time they put their X in a box.

Diabeties is such a serious and worrying condition to live with

It's awful the amount of hoops he was forced to jump through

Hope it all gets sorted out

maddyone

Thank you for your suggestion growstuff.
There is an ongoing issue of pay in general practice, not just now as there are issues of pay with many professions, but I’m aware that the issue of pay has been rumbling for about ten years or more. The level of pay has been seriously eroded over time and GPs are not happy about it. Maybe that needs to be looked at properly too.

It was Blair who paid GPs handsomely. Maybe people should vote Labour next time.

VioletSky

Diabeties is such a serious and worrying condition to live with

It's awful the amount of hoops he was forced to jump through

Hope it all gets sorted out

I'm diabetic, so I know. I'm amazed that he should have been forced to go through those hoops. The government insists that diabetics have reviews. Otherwise the GPs aren't paid for their services.

Good for you growstuff. I agree that it pays to be persistent if the problem is real. However we have many appointments where patients have simply not turned up, a poster upthread pointed this out. Now do you really think a person who makes an appointment and then doesn’t go is ill? They can’t be otherwise they’d turn up. This reduces the numbers of available appointments for people who are ill. There are also patients who turn up to request sun lotion or nit lotion on prescription. This is true because my daughter GP has had such patients. She refused to prescribe these items but no doubt the patients who had requested them would have then complained vehemently about her. Or as she said, gone to another GP who will prescribe them for a quiet life. Both of these examples show misuse of the health service, and both reduce the number of available appointments for the people who really need them.
Unfortunately people often don’t want to acknowledge this misuse of the health service.

It is difficult to understand why things have changed so much . I have been with the same practice for 50 years . Doctors have changed but the numbers remain the same and no changes since Covid . So shortages cannot be the reason for not being able to get face to face appointments. We had a lovely GP for a while, but she returned to hospital working as she told me she didn’t want to work on the phone all day and wanted to “see patients” I have tried to join our patient participation panel but it seems it no longer exists. We have some private hospitals now providing Private GP appointments . Wondering if all these NHS GP access issues are a deliberate plan to privatise GP’s as have so many other areas . Breast and bowel screening are now run by private companies, so much planned surgery is done in private hospitals on NHS .

GPs are not actually employed by the NHS like hospital doctors are, they are self employed. So they cannot be privatised, because they’re already private. They ‘buy in’ to a Practice and so they own it collectively with the other GPs in the Practice. The government gives the practice money, but they don’t employ the doctors or own the premises.

Yes growstuff it was Blair who paid the GPs “handsomely” but it soon became evident that the handsome pay rise had strings attached and these were, an exponential rise in the number of duties they had to perform.
They could not just simply “stand still” and enjoy their well paid status but would need to take on the responsibility for several other roles.
And so this is we’re it all began really. Then more and more GPs started to do part time hours due to the stress and exhaustion from it all.