NHS dors work too

Hmmm. My previously excellent GP practise has been decimated. Can't get GPs to fill their vacancies. Not enough students. Went to the doctors yesterday. I had to wait almost THREE weeks for that appointment.

In addition, our previously outstanding local hospital is running on empty. At A&E for my grandson at the weekend (had drunk something poisonous). We had to wait over 12 hours to see a doctor.

You're lucky Tooting29. As I used to think I was. Incredible service in the past from the very same places. But lack of funding has drained the services available. I dread getting cancer again. Last time my treatment was good. It wouldn't be now.

Tooting29 perhaps because the reorganisation under the Tory government led to some areas becoming inefficient, and other areas, particularly poor ones inadequately staffed and starved of investment. Tory policies have as I'm pleased you have pointed out, resulted in an NHS service that is not working in many areas, only proper investment will save it.

I agree Trisher. We live in S. Tyneside, traditionally a poor area. I looked on the link, I think from GracesGran and found that 2 out of the 3 practises here are suffering from financial cuts.
OTOH we have a very good hospital service for surgery, built under Labour's watch around 2000.

Yes my lovely GP has retired and they can't find a replacement after a year.
I live in a "good" part of the country where people come on holiday.
New GP's don't want to put the work in anymore.

Ours is a small practice and not a great big health centre so the GP's have to be more involved with their patients.

My nearest hospital is nearly 30 miles away and during tourist time it can take a couple of hours to get there.

They closed the two nearer hospitals in the last 10 years

Not like that round here (Central London).

My local surgery is set to lose £65000 next year. That will be one less doctor or two less nurses.

@ Whitewave - it was your link I referred to, not GGran.
Apologies.

You are fortunate, we can no longer make an appointment to see a doctor. We ring or email the surgery asking for an appointment and preferably outlining the problem. The doctor thn rings later in the day. You either have to stay in all day ar end up having a medical consultation in the middle of a supermarket aisle or during an important meeting.

The doctor can prescribe based on the phone call or pass you to reception to make an appointment to see the doctor - except it may not be the doctor. It may be the Nurse -Practioner. This happened to me. I felt the NP was not listening to me just recognising some symptoms and passing me off with a simple explanation.

I need to gird my loins, so to speak, and ring again and insist I see a real doctor.

I agree with you MOnica. That's the way things are going. Phone consultations are not the answer.

Tooting "Ask your GP" is a private triage service, which GP practices pay for. It's not available across the country, although most GP practices do now have arrangements for triaging.

There have been a number of complaints at my practice about it because patients (especially those with chronic conditions and terminal illnesses) don't feel they're getting an appropriate and adequate service.

Money is stealthily being siphoned off to privatisation.

I admit it is silly but what completely undermined my conficence in the nurse practioner was that she kept using the word 'bless' in every sentence, said in that patronising tone use for older women that implies that the person you are speaking to sees you as some half witted old dear, to be dealt with quickly and cheaply and bustled out of the surgery.

? Of course it works, be no point at all otherwise. Can it work better is the question. The answer to that question is yes. Very very much yes.

I was sitting in a coffee shop, about a month ago, and happened to be next to a final year medical student. She was having a (loud) Skype chat with a friend.

The young lady was very well spoken, clearly quite middle class. She spoke of her distaste for the patients at the GP practise she was working at. She decried the work load.

Mainly, what she talked about was how, as soon as she finished training she was going to hot foot it abroad to work.

NOW, I know this makes me a hypocrite. I'm a teacher and I've worked abroad and am going to work abroad again. BUT the main reason I'm going to do this is because I can't get a permanent job in the UK due to the seniority of my point on the pay scale.

What shocked me was that this girl was publically rude about her patients and her willingness to take OUT of the British system and put nothing back in. The exact opposite, in fact, of many of our overseas trained nurses and doctors.

How to privatise a public service: starve it of funds so people have to pay for good service. Then fully privatise the service while extolling the virtues of free market competition. It worked with the railways, water etc. Why should the NHS be any different.
PS Boris lies - in case anyone hasn't realised this!

I don't think that's silly at all MOnica. I refuse point blank to see the nurse practitioners because I find them so patronising. I don't go to the GP very often, but when I do, it's because I'm at my wit's end with some symptom or other. I'm diabetic and that's how the nurse practitioner thinks of me - everything is put down to diabetes. She doesn't have the training to associate symptoms with any other condition. I get a lecture which I could read about in any of the NHS published literature, delivered in a way that one would speak to a child or (as you say) reserved for doddery old ladies, who supposedly have lost their minds.

All of our local GPs work part time. They are obviously earning enough to live well on two or three days work a week. As a result there are long waits to see a particular doctor who may know 'the whole story'. If they all worked full time it would not be such a problem.

What do you call full time exactly ? My GP works 3 days a week, 11 hours a day, to see as many patients as possible she leaves the admin., unless urgent, for the next day. In a good week that means another 7 - 8 hours work on her days off.
I call that full time.

For many I think the answer to that is 24/7 hazel93, or whenever I want to see them!

A friend of mine is a GP, who works (is paid for) three days a week. She has told me she arrives every morning an hour before she's paid to be there, so she can go through paperwork which has built up. Sometimes I've popped in to see her during the evening and she's still phoning patients at home long after surgery has closed. Apparently she does that, so that she can talk to patients without being constantly interrupted. I know she usually overruns the time for surgeries because many patients take more than ten minutes. She's working a 13/14 hour day. A 39/42 hour week is as much as most people work.

rubysong The problem is finding GPs to fill vacancies. My surgery has had a vacancy for a partner since the former one retired nearly two years ago. There has also been a vacancy for a salaried GP for a year. The vacancies are covered by locums, who cost more and don't provide continuity of care.

I don't think there is any doubt that, like teachers, doctors want to live in pleasant and well-served areas. You often find that older reporters of their experience and some of the younger ones, don't like change - not being able to see "their own" doctor, not wanting to use technology, etc.

But there is without a doubt a shortage of GPs and huge pressure on those working in the surgeries.

GracesGran I have no objection to technology, but yes I do want continuity of care, which can't happen with remote tele-medicine or widespread use of locums. GP practices are being encouraged to use more physiotherapists, clinical phramacists, nurse practitioners, etc as a cheap alternative to GP consulting. That's all very well for certain acute conditions, but not if people have ongoing, chronic conditions.

Researchers have shown that patient outcome is better when they have continuity of care.