GP Bashing

[Arealmanithink]

To think this was really unnecessary and politically driven? Why? Just why?

Daily fail link. Sorry

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2840252/Why-fear-GPs-NHS-s-problem-not-solution-surgeon-J-MEIRION-THOMAS.html

[Kundry]

The man is an utter tit. He works in a highly specialist field in a highly specialist hospital and I doubt has the first clue what GPs do all day.

His previous article for the Fail suggested it was all the fault of women for going into medicine and inconveniently having babies

[Arealmanithink]

Yep. I think so too.. My DW is a GP and I don't recognize anything he says as reality,, Too bad he has a platform.

[dorasee]

Ugh...My DH is a GP and I despair for him. This current animosity for GPs is so politically driven. Who would want to become a GP now? They are so overworked and undervalued. And then Bozo the Clown here comes along with this drivel. He hasn't got a clue but he does have an audience.

[shadowfax07]

The two GPs that I've seen recently have both remembered me and my health issues and have given me wonderful care. The practise opens late one night during the week as well. That report is certainly not my experience of GPs.

[PatricianOfAnkhMorpork]

Well I'm a patient with no connections to the medical world and I do recognise a lot of what he says as I've experienced it!

Never the same GP seen twice, almost impossible to get an advanced appointment (fun when you are managing diabetes round a FT job), rude receptionists, rude GPs, refusal to refer to private healthcare, ignoring the original problem we were investigating as I tested positive for something more lucrative interesting, mirena coil apparently cures everything. Need I go on?

Unfortunately all the other surgeries where I live are just as bad.

[Arealmanithink]

dorasee LOL at Bozo.. You're American too? Very US reference..

[plummyjam]

It's all spin. The partnership model of general practice doesn't favour privatisation and at the moment it's all that's stopping the likes of Virgin taking over primary care. Discredit and vilify fat cat GP's until they get what they deserve and have their contracts taken off them and handed over to Richard Branson et al.

[Hatespiders]

He seems to be pushing for more 'highly trained' nurses to take over much of the work of GPs. To a point I agree, but you can't expect nurses to diagnose or treat any but the less serious complaints; the danger is patients could have more serious conditions being missed.

He also says that GPs have shown not to be expert in specialised fields. Well of course not. The clue is in the word General.

Regarding GPs pay which he thinks is too high; they study and train for five years and then do a clinical year and it's slave labour by all accounts. Junior doctors are still overworked and stressed to the nines. The pay they finally achieve reflects this and the enormous responsibility the job entails.

I'm sorry Patrician that your local surgeries are so bad. We had a terrible one, but changed to a super one, where all the staff & doctors are very good indeed.

[Mrscog]

I have no complaints about our GP practice, wonderful GP's, long appointments, appointments the same day etc. etc. However, this is in a small rural surgery - I wonder if they have fewer constraints/challenges.

[Sirzy]

I have to say my personal experinces of GPs recently is pretty poor. That's not to say a lot don't do a fantastic job in hard conditions but a lot do let their patients down.

When they can't/won't even read the basics of a patients notes (as in what medication they are on) before a consultation then there is no surprise that people get frustrated!

[LineRunner]

I got OH to move his family from his appalling GP surgery to my very good one earlier in the year.

My GP sent me a handwritten reminder letter about some medication last week, with a joke in it. They have thousands of patients, but he found time to do this. His colleague got me to A&E last summer when I had the infamous pulmonary embolism, and saved my life.

These are good people. Really good people.

[EEVEElution]

My local GP surgery is a mixed bag. A couple of the GPs are excellent, really warm and friendly. The others however are very rude and act like their time is being wasted, I had this when I went for my postpartum checkup and I came out feeling really upset by it. Rebooked with one of the nice ones and had chance to chat through all my concerns. Would be nice to have some kind of system to recognize the good ones but it would probably end up as a stick to beat them with..

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

As patient with more than one long term health condition I don't recognise that picture at all. Even in the practice I moved from because I wasn't happy with the care I was getting most of that article doesn't apply.

If he wants to start talking about mental health services OTOH...

[lampygirl]

Patrician I feel your pain. I have type 1 from childhood and it is a nightmare to get appointments. I work in the events industry, ringing up at 8am each day isnt going to cut it, I need to be able to book my routine checkups with good notice around events that are going on.

I dont think it is the fault of teh GPs individually, usually when you get to a mutually convenient appointment the ones i have dealt with have been OK. People work longer and longer hours, and its too risky for me to make appointments in my lunch break because they inevitably dont run to time, and that means loss of income for me. This leaves me with evening appointments only, maybe one evening a week if i'm lucky.

I can tell the surgery 12 months in advance when to book my next annual checkup so surely they could book me something in one or two months time...

[PiperIsTerrysChoclateOrange]

I think the gp get the brunt of it because we as patients don't know how the system works or conflicting advice

For example a thread on mumsnet where a women is having extremely heavy periods been to several doctors, yet not 1 gp has referred to a gynaecologist.

Now perhaps if it was explained why after months of trouble a gynaecologist is not appropriate then people would have better understand more.

[YoungGirlGrowingOld]

Also feel Patrician's pain - that article chimes exactly with my experience of GP's. Which is annoying because I hate the Daily Heil.

DH is a consultant and often comes home and kicks the cat (metaphorically) because a GP has 'stayed and played' with a patient who should have been seen urgently. He once challenged one particularly hopeless GP and was told that since she only sees one or two cases of cancer a year, she thought it was very unlikely to be anything serious. Even I knew the patient's symptoms suggested cancer FFS.

The author is being a dick about more trained nurses though. They are not the solution, but they are cheaper.

[Moniker1]

I seem to live in some parallel universe to the rest of the UK.

GPs are good and thorough (though I will admit they discourage chatting or anything that might time waste)

The Police are polite and efficient and seem to deal well with local probs.

Carers are hard working and kindly (as much as their limited time allows)

Nurses are friendly (though busy)

Even the teachers are pretty good considering the difficult children they often have in their classes.

Like I said - a parallel universe!

[Electriclaundryland]

Our family GP practice is excellent. When DS first got I'll they got him a specialist appointment within a week. The doc rang me at home twice to talk things through and follow up.

[Musicaltheatremum]

I get fed up with all the bashing too. I'm a GP it's bloody hard work just now. I will go to the end of the road for a patient but the beaurocracy is crazy and the amount of stuff that hospital doctors think that we should do because it's straight forward, which it is, but not when every department decides that at the same time. I don't blame the hospitals, they're overworked too. One of the huge problems are the complex cases especially care of the elderly that were managed in the hospitals and now are managed in the community and they money they saved in the hospitals didn't come out to either primary care or social care which is why it takes weeks to get a care package.

I actually had to apologise to a patient today as I had done an exasperated sigh on the phone as she asked me to see both her and her son in an emergency appointment. I already had done over an hour of phone calls. I apologised and explained I was just having a really busy day and she was fine.
I also found out that a patient of mine who has been ill for 18 months does have cancer. I have thought this for months but couldn't find anything and nor could the hospital but finally it showed itself so I was quite upset about that too.

We advertised for a GP 5 years ago and had 50 applicants. We are advertising again and have had none and there are 9 other vacancies in our city and none are getting any applicants. There is a serious crisis in GP land and no one is listening.

Rant over.

[Sirzy]

Moniker - other than GPs I am in your parallel universe

[brotherhoodofspam]

I'm a GP and have just returned home having started my surgery at 7.30 am (trying to improve availability for working people) this is drivel written by a surgeon with no idea of what GPs do (in fact I have serious doubts about whether he really is a Dr due to the amount of politically driven nonsense he's spouting, and if he is, it raises serious concerns about his professional integrity as he's clearly trying do his bit to undermine his colleagues and destroy the NHS - it would be interesting to find out what percentage of his working week is spent in the NHS and what percentage private sector). It's a rewarding job with generally appreciative patients so I don't mind being knackered and emotionally drained but twats like this just make you feel like you're being kicked when you're down. The £105000 would be nice but is a complete myth if you work in an area like mine.

[UncleT]

There's certainly something seriously wring with general practice in many areas. Not being able to get any appointments is basically routine for many, difficult to work around. He's not right about everything of course, but there are huge problems at the moment and care is suffering.

[brotherhoodofspam]

The problem is chronic under investment, low morale, recruitment crisis. We can't knit appointments out of thin air.

[Kundry]

Yes there is something wrong - but the reason you can't get an appointment isn't that they are all lazing about, it's that General Practice is massively underfunded and there aren't enough GPs to make more appointments.

However instead we choose to slag off the existing GPs - who understandably are now trying to emigrate, cut their hours, switch to other areas of medicine, retire or get out in any way they can as going to work to be shouted at all day for something that isn't your fault is a soul destroying job. I work in a different specialty and mailed all the local GPs recently with a job ad - response was massive, all of them saying they wouldn't have thought of applying for a non-GP job before but life in GP was becoming unbearable.

Oh and no-one's coming to replace the ones who leave as medical students and newly qualified doctors aren't stupid and don't want to do a job which means that you wake up every morning to be told how shit you are in the media.

The NHS is being broken up in front of our eyes and the politicians have us believing it's everyone's fault but theirs

[UncleT]

I wasn't slagging off GPs. Quite obviously the problem is indeed one of resourcing in the main. Doesn't make the results any better though.