First available GP appointment?

Persistant cough here and after it didn't clear in 4 weeks, I rang Dr.

Phoned for appt in mid April, first telephone consult offered is June 1st.

6 weeks for a phone call.

Still waiting.....

My practice has recently banned people coming in at opening time to ask for appointments - all has to be online or by phone.

Not here. Its ridiculous 😡

I was on hold for 45 mins last week, appts all gone when I go through.
DH called again the next day - only 37mins that day (no appts, left though)
The day after, back to 45 mins but no appts.

I then called in on the pretext I needed to query blood test results. Managed to get a Sunday appt in another surgery but had to wait 5 weeks for that. I'll no doubt be better by then...

My sister has just got a hospital appt through for July 2024 so I suppose I shouldn't moan 🙄

We can't book appointments in person. It's phone or nothing.

Same here. Either queue at 8am for an 'urgent' same day, or wait 6 weeks. No in-between.

But if you call or go in at 8am you can get an on the day appt right?

For a non urgent medical review that is perfectly acceptable.

That's the usual with our GP - 3/4 weeks unless you call at 8.30 am for urgent.

I feel the frustration OP. I once had them actually answer the phone only to tell me that they weren't taking an phone calls that day and to ring back tomorrow

I think some people go in person on the day to get an appointment as they open but not everyone has that time!

@AlwaysAuntie Is your COPD monitored by a consultant at your local hospital?

Ummm what? It was diagnosed in hospital but thats it. Should I be asking my GP for a referral...and to who? Feel free to pm me if you'd rather, I do feel rather alone and uninformed with this and Google can be a bit frightening at times.

Ours have recently improved and now book a week ahead or emergency on the day -.so call at 8,30 for emergency on the day and call at 5pm when the appointments a week today open for routine appointments.

Specialists like muscular skeletal and physio and stuff like phlebotomy and smears run their own diaries outside of thay system

My GPs do work very hard - 2 have left suddenly, presumably burnt out, so we have 4 regular GPs, two locums. Routine appointments are 4-5 weeks away usually but there are urgent same day appointments available.

I had excruciating pain down one side of my face on Tuesday, phoned the GP at 7.58am on Wednesday to try for an appointment. I had to redial 52 times but got through about 8.20 and got a FtF appointment for 10am. Turns out it’s sinusitis - I’ve never had pain like it!

Primary care is overwhelmed, I don’t blame the staff, it’s not their fault. Some practices do seem to have better access than others though.

In our GPs you have to be well enough to queue from 7.30am to wait for the doors to open at 8.30 to try to grab an appt. If you call you can be caller number 81 in the queue. So you know there is no point hanging on. If by some weird luck you are say caller number 23 and you wait and wait...and then get cut off after around 75mins of hanging on. Our GP also used to charge premium rate for all the time you spent hanging on the line.
If you have managed to crawl to the surgery, you cannot get an appt for less than 6 weeks time.
My friend has finished his fourth round of antibiotics for a water infection, all without once speaking to a GP, just messages through the receptionist. No water sample required and still the problem remains. So now he waits the 6 weeks for an appointment. We all know that he will end up in A&E before that. Where the current queues are over 24 hours. They put 10+ hour wait on notice board but its nowhere near that.
I'm sure GPs will say they are working very hard but most of them only work 3 days a week.
It's a mess.

@Pixiedust1234 that's horrendous!! My dad had COPD and his inhalers were a lifeline. I really am sorry you're not getting the kind of treatment you need. I do agree Nurse Practitioners are pretty awesome, but yeh seeing a Dr in your circumstances should be higher on their priority list.

Is your COPD monitored by a consultant at your local hospital? Or your lupus? (Sorry I don't know much about lupus, except it's an awful disease that's hard to treat). I ask because maybe if you contact the consultant and discuss the issue with them they might give you an appointment for them to look further into your issue with the inhaler.

@AlwaysAuntie I was very surprised too considering I have COPD and Lupus. I'm now on my third different inhaler without seeing a soul, its just phone consults. Well, not even a consult its just "try this one". Not spoken to a GP yet, its been Nurse Practitioner, Asthma Nurse and back to Nurse Practitioner. I do rate Nurse Practitioners highly but I would have expected a GP callback by the third time😮 Fingers crossed this inhaler works 🍀

@snowbellsxox I'm a GP receptionist too , I love it ! We have a book and wait system which works quite well but a routine appointment is 21/6 but everyone I spoke to today was fine with that !

I am a gp receptionist
We have urgent on the day no matter what time you call up, if you need to be spoken to that day you will be.
We also have routine ie someone has a red patch on their leg unsure what it is, been there for 7 months
They can wait an extra 4/5 weeks to discuss with gp.
I think it works well. I hate the way my own doctors works! If you miss the 8am urgent appts there's none left!
They all seem to go within half hour too!
Doesn't work at all and many times I've had to call 111 and they've tasked the gp to call me within the hour: (usually for the kids)

They can’t provide a champagne service on a smartprice lemonade budget. Complain to your MP!!

Blimey! I've been having breathing problems, then my feet got very swollen, I called my doctors and was initially told there were no appointments available. Told receptionist what I needed to talk with dr about. Was told as it was a breathing issue they could get me on the emergency call back list. 15mins later I had a phone call, where I was prescribed water tablets and booked in for an appointment a couple days afterwards. Now waiting for blood tests and have an inhaler.

Surprised that your Dr's haven't called you in to see them in person considering your breathing issues.

I'm thankful my GP seems to have cracked it with the online triage because everything is always sorted out same day but I called my dentist this week the day after getting my reminder text. I am on the list and never skipped an appointment and the first check up available is end of September.

If it's for a routine appointment I don't actually think that's too bad! Obviously not acceptable for an emergency appointment, infection etc, but those are same day appointments in my surgery. I can wait a couple of months for an appointment with my hairdresser, so 1 month for a GP seems ok to me!

The problem is, nothing you need to see a GP for can wait. Be it, you’ve got symptoms of diabetes, chronic back pain, you think you might have ADHD, you’re feeling low, you’ve got an infected toenail, you’re wondering about a new mole. Literally none of that can just wait a month. You wouldn’t be calling if you didn’t need to see a doctor. I was extremely poorly with what I now think to be COVID after Christmas, coughing, high BP and heart rate over 120. GP out of hours unavailable so instructed to ring 111. 111 took 1hr to get through, they said a nurse would call me back in 5hrs. Callback cancelled 10 minutes later. There was honestly no medical help available just short of presenting at A&E (felt silly to do that) and ringing 999 which again would’ve been stupid because it didn’t need to waste an ambulance’s time. I had to hope I was okay and I was, but help shouldn’t just be unavailable like that