Can drs have no pre bookable appointments?

So did you call 111 today? Or go online and fill in the 111 form?

I think it depends, at our surgery we have e consult but can also book an appointment and will be seen within 48 hours and within 24 hours if it's a child. Exh's surgery though it's impossible, you have to phone at 8am when everyone is trying to get emergency appointments on the off chance that there is a space on a date that opens that morning for 3 weeks time. If you see a GP who asks to see you again to follow up you can't book an appointment for the follow up you have to phone on the day for an emergency appointment which means that if the receptionist doesn't consider it an emergency you won't get an appointment.

yes, it is and it’s not sustainable.
I absolutely feel your pain, we are like hostages of the system.
Our surgery does online forms so you’d probably get a routine appointment to discuss this issue in 6-9 weeks.

I've got significant health issues too so it's really not appropriate for me not to have a GP either.

It's just awful!

My GP surgery is exactly the same.

I've been left without a GP, effectively. I can force someone to see me if it's an emergency by ringing 111, but all other types of medical care I'm now unable to access.

I've contacted the practice manager at length about it. He thinks it's fine!

My GPs are like this, I have been battling with some health issues and have needed numerous blood tests over the last few months.

Everything is online to request to see the doctor and on some occasions they shut the online triage request down because they have two many requests to process. With the advice to call 111. Which is fine if you have a one off medical need and need an antibiotic etc but for those of us with long term health issues it’s frustrating

I feel horribly sorry for my GP practice as the staff are all fabulous but they are seriously over capacity. A new housing estate was built just down the road a few years ago. 700 houses but no infrastructure so the local GP surgeries have had to accommodate goodness knows how many more patients. It’s a shambles.

It's awful. Here during Covid most practices triaged. Now they have reverted to bookable for whatever and same day for on call urgent issues. The GP calls back advised / brings you in tbs whatever.
Husband is a GP I'm a hospital doc. Gp had terrible recruitment issues a few yrs ago only two drs in practice the other practice was handed back to the HB and closed. Now practices have full complement if Drs as well as ANPs etc who are overseen and their workload controlled by the GPs ( easier cases etc).
In the hospital works we are currently in the highest pressure colour whatever that is these days so we have an overwhelmed AE with patients waiting in the waiting room who should be in AE or even resus and wards with extra patients ie above capacity 22pts on a 20 bed ward to try and reduce the AE overwhelm and make it in anyway safer. It's hard as everyone is looking after too many patients.

Sympathies OP, my surgery is the same as yours. No e-consult just phone on the day for same day appointments. The phone lines open at 8am and close as soon as all the appointments have gone which is usually within 10 minutes. In desperation one time I took a screenshot of the number of times I’d tried to call which was over 200 in one morning and emailed it to reception. Surprising they got in touch and offered me an appointment later that week. Is it worth trying that?

This may not be relevant to you but I got an appt. for possible peri symptoms through a sexual health clinic last year.

I saw a nurse there for some symptoms - she suggested peri, which hadn't occured to me, and booked me an appointment.

I feel so sad about the 111 system.
I'm happy its there. But we've had to implement a massive new system, and we have to talk to more people, simply to access a GP appointment.

Its a very backwards complicated, not to mention expensive, solution to a very basic problem - how to access a GP.

They do have messaging systems. It works like this:

- call exactly at 8am.

"Sorry we have too many callers - please try again"
or you get through & answer the one million options to make an appointment - then "You are caller number 23 - please hold, your call is important to us" & hold for an hour or so and then get through and find there are no appointments.

• call at 8.03 am & auto system tells you

My surgery does offer a long list of options - call back, call tomorrow, use econsult (never availability), go to our website (website tells you to call), use NHS Ap (can't make GP appointment on there) etc.

It's all part of the loop of doom and no one is getting an appointment.

End result is health care is very difficult to access and many will not be bothering.

So happy my kids are very rarely unwell - they have not seen a GP since before we moved 7 years ago.

Phone 111. In my experience, if you tell them your symptoms and they think you need to see a doctor, and you’ve told them you can’t get an appointment, they will phone the doctor themselves and tell him/her you need to be seen. In my case the surgery phoned back the same day with an appointment for the following day.

Have you phoned 111 yet?

They will ask you a million questions then give you either a gp appt somewhere, a gp phone call or advise you to go to urgent care.

I was prescribed iron supplements by the GP as extremely deficient and discovered that I could buy exactly the same strength otc at half the price in the form of Ferrous Fumerate/Sulphate. They’re ones you have to ask pharmacist for rather than in shelves. Maybe you could try these if you’re not already and see if they help while you’re trying to get an appt. Our local pharmacist can advise on high strength supplements for other things too. sometimes they can offer things you won’t find unless you ask.

It took me ages to work out how to negotiate our practice, probably because times have changed and because I fortunately haven’t needed much help historically.

so for an “urgent” appointment eg UTI you call at 8am and wait in a queue for up to 45 minutes, ours are pretty good and you are allocated an appropriate HCP so Dr, Advanced Clinical Practioner or Nurse depending on issue. You cannot demand a doctor if you can be treated by a nurse. If all the appointments are gone and it’s still considered urgent you get a phone appointment, the clinician will call you anytime up to 14:00 and then will call you in to the surgery later that day if they can’t resolve over the phone.

for none urgent stuff (I have steroid injections in a joint) you raise a Patches request and it’s picked up by someone and reception will call you back with a non urgent appointment probably three weeks in advance.

Understanding how it works, means everyone’s expectations are met and it’s run really well.

Yes I hate calling and sitting on hold for half an hour, then having to wait five hours for a call back, but I’ve not been let down and no longer get frustrated because I know how it works.

edited to add, I am aware ours is a good practice and is rated as such. I also am aware not all surgeries are good, but it’s very useful to know how they work.

Cannot re-book appointments at my GPS either.
At my last appointment, my doctor told.me.to.come back in 8 weeks. That was 7 months ago as I just can't get a nom-emergency appointment at 8am.

If they don't have capacity then that's even more reason why they should triage all requests rather than rely on fastest finger first.

It's very possible of course that if the OP rang outside the booking window with red flag symptoms (eg unexplained weight loss + blood in stool, or just a raging ear/bladder infection) then an appointment would be found. I'd certainly hope so.

And what if what's wrong with her is thyroid problems? Or early menopause? Or something more serious?

Similar to other posters you cannot pick a day and pre book and appointment online at mine. Nor can you call in the morning to request an appointment, unless it is urgent. So you submit an online form explaining the situation and Triage it then call you back, usually to offer a future appointment day/time.

@Sheknowsaboutme that is for pre existing conditions. Usually monitoring for chronic illness. The op does need a GP appointment.