My GP has told me that 80% of their appointments don't need a GP appointment.

No they are not! They don’t know what questions they need to ask!

Eating disorders do not fall alongside grief and loneliness. They require specialist treatment, sometimes as in patients and can be fatal.

There seems to be a common theme on this thread of posters suggesting conditions they consider ‘minor’ but simply show their lack of knowledge about serious conditions and how they can present. This shows exactly why people need to see GPs.

I'm sorry but the idea that going private frees up an NHS GPs time for others who can't afford private care is just wrong. We still have the same number of doctors, let's imagine everyone in the UK used private GPs instead, there would be exactly the same pressure to get an appointment as you do now with the NHS. If anything people going private makes things worse for those who can't afford to because their GP is now off seeing private patients so has less time for their NHS patients.
This isn't a criticism of you btw, I'm just challenging the idea that you going private free up NHS appointments for others.

My clinics are full for a month. If I’m sat on the phone who would see my patients?
Practice nurse.

My GPs do actually have an AI triage system , not to diagnose but to tell you if you need to see a Dr or if it’s urgent or not. It’s utterly shit. And I’m quite scared someone is going to die because of it. The questions are so narrow that only the very smallest and most serious number of things will allow you to see a Dr within a couple of days. Otherwise for everything else it’s a 3 week wait. You can’t request a female GP which I think is awful so you turn up not knowing who you’re going into see. I really hope other surgeries don’t go down this route.

This ⬆️

I have tried going to the pharmacist for various ailments for myself and my kids and, every time, the pharmacist couldn't prescribe anything or offer advice, they said that I needed to see a GP.

To be fair, I just needed a cardiology scan appointment as I should have a check up every two years and nothing was forthcoming so I just rang cardiology at the hospital and sorted it myself. Not sure if I was meant to do that or not, I think it was meant to come via GP, but it was very quick and I was in within a few weeks.

The consultant waiting times don’t help either
I can’t even count how many times I was at the GP or a&e for pain relief in the 2 year wait period. I also had an ambulance twice as was unable to get off the floor due to the pain. They gave me gas and air to be able to get me in

when they operated they found the endometriosis was so severe that my bowel had folded in half

I can also see this happening in the UK, but for some reason it works well overseas. I lived in a country where everyone self-referred and you saw a so-called family doctor for the more pedestrian stuff like gastro, contraception, etc. NHS-type waits were unheard of. I need annual colonoscopy, hysteroscopy and scan, which I just organised myself rather than waiting around for the GP (and eventually having to remind them anyway) - always prompt and efficient.

No, for things like foot problems; or blocked ears. That you still have to go through the GP for. Can self-refer for physio no bother, I don’t see why you can’t self-refer or minor problems without having see or speak to a GP first.

Self referrals to whom, specialists? Can you imagine, everyone with an upset stomach would present in the gastro waiting area. We'd have the A&E crowds in every single outpatient department all claiming they might have sepsis.

My mum had a nasty chest infection. She was told that it was viral by the gp. She ended up in hospital a few days later. I badly injured my knee a few years ago. It kept giving way when i tried to walk. I was told that i have anxiety by my physio. I am still having problems with my knee. I have given up getting the help i need as i am sick of been told that it is down to anxiety.

My mum has this problem too with the extra bonus that the attached pharmacy takes 14 days to fulfil a prescription! So she needs to put in a prescription almost as soon as she collects one to avoid running out. A couple of times now she'd had to borrow from a friend who has the same medication but gets her prescriptions within 3 days.

I know they want to avoid waste but it makes no sense for lifelong conditions and where they are too inefficient to fulfil the prescriptions quickly.

(I have suggested to my mum several times that she gets her prescriptions elsewhere but she likes this one as it has easy parking).

DS had a bout of croup when he was about 2. He was running around still but wheezing and struggling to breathe a bit. We booked him into the GP. Didn't think it was that serious.

Reception took one look at him and called an ambulance. He then proceeded to still run around the cot in hospital he had despite them giving him steroids and the fact he was still struggling to breathe.

We were told any issue with a child of that age struggling to breathe it's direct to a&e. The fact he's a monster and was still literally running around completely fooled us. Paramedics said better to be over cautious with children of that age than not.

It is not the funding that is the problem, it is the inefficiency and waste. Doctors are as responsible for that as anyone - be it the design at the start that was needed to bring private consultants and GPs on board, the empire building, the BMA, the recruitment of foreign doctors over British trained ones, the idea that doctors make the best managers…. And with GPs the conflict of interest between their privately run GP practice and the needs of the NHS.

Everyone I know who visits a GP gets told there's nothing wrong with them, or it's anxiety, and it always turns out to be something serious.

So I have no doubt GPs think 80% of their patients are time wasters. But I bet they're wrong

I find GPs pretty crap in general - they know less than me about my health conditions. But I find consultants on the whole pretty good and knowledgeable about their area

If only everyone who could afford it would go privately to a GP. TBH that's what I do, every single time I need to which is about four times a year. I have a chronic illness but am fine, it just needs an eye kept on it. Before anyone pounces on me, yes I know I'm lucky I can afford it, but so can millions of others but they won't pay for private care at all.

I do have PHI and while it is a luxury, I feel fine for using it, as I feel it frees up another space in the NHS GP service for someone less fortunate. I get all my bloods, Ultrasounds, CT, MRI, cardiac checks and cancer screening privately also.

The care is no more professional than medics in the NHS, but it is better for me.

My best friends GP told her she had IBS. It was cancer. Again discovered when she took herself to A&E.

I am 20 year survivor of advanced bowel cancer who was fobbed off by every GP partner (bar one) in a large practice over the course of a year. At the time, appointments were easier to come by and I had at least 10, all with an actual GP, before being offered a referral for "health anxiety". My notes make me sound like some kind of Victorian "bluestocking" and contain more references to my marital status and my father's suicide than to my actual symptoms. No tests were ordered and the diagnosis dismissively offered by one GP (like the PP above) was IBS.

I now pop up on threads like this to remind people not to accept IBS as a diagnosis from a GP without further investigation, such as a colonoscopy. IBS is a diagnosis of exclusion, not of "fuck knows and I can't be arsed to look properly". Unless you are willing to let the NHS play fast and loose with your health, all unexplained symptoms of bowel cancer (change in bowel habit, abdominal pain, bleeding, etc) should be investigated, especially if there is a family history, and you are NOT too young. (I was barely 30 with no family history).

Most people with these symptoms will not have bowel cancer, and I appreciate that GP's have to make difficult decisions about referrals when they may see multiple people with abdominal complaints that turn out to be self-limiting. However, that's a "them" problem and is presumably the reason why they are paid so handsomely.

Since then, I have recovered from cancer, sued the NHS for negligence and married a physician. One of those things, not sure which, seems to have stopped the standard GP routine of delays and fobbing off and I have received nothing but excellent service from my current GP practice.

The thing is that soon GP's will be further up the food chain, if AI keeps improving. I can see a time when you do a version of E-consult, it links to your notes and adds your symptoms and comes up with a few suggestions. Often it can do that already better than the GP. My B12 issue was obvious but the GP didn't want the practice to pay for the injections so did all the loading doses, then stopped when it crashed again refused to give me any more because the last bloods said it was high - after the loading doses! My new practice (after doing bloods and confirming it had gone back down through the floor since) said it is common because of the cost, so they asked if I am OK to pay and of course I am, I just want to be able to get out of bed every day FFS.

What really got me with it though was that I spent so much time and energy telling them what was wrong and they kept denying it - so yes I would have been down as a patient with no real cause. Being gaslit for a year certainly doesn't inspire trust. Anyone else who has these issues, vote with your feet. Move GP's, you can do it online with no need to explain why. Ask your friends where is good and go.

I do find it hard to judge with little children. Worried about whether I should borrow the GP over my child’s cough and wheezing or was I being silly over a preschooler’s cold. Called and they said they’d put me on the call list for the day. An hour or so later he was rushed into hospital in an ambulance and spent multiple days there because he deteriorated so fast. As I called the ambulance I was still worried about whether I was overreacting and wasting their time, but by the time they arrived he was floppy and struggling for every breath. The trouble is, people like me who hate wasting the NHS’s time and resources pick up on these messages and second guess our instincts.

But that’s a problem with meds being dispensed in bulk rather than the initial prescribing. You give a 6/12 month prescription but only dispense every monthly and this eliminates the chance of drug waste.

So it takes the GP say one minute to click and approve a repeat. Say arbitrarily they need to do this 5 times a day. That’s 25 mins of time a week. Now if it’s a surgery like mine with 4 doctors that’s 100 mins of GPs time a week that could be better served by using a more sensible system

But on the other side of the coin,there's always going to be people who DO need a GP appointment who don't make one.

I don't know. My GP is always nagging me to book appointments more swiftly. 🙄

Except that doesn’t happen. My mum has been on omeprazol for years now and has never had bloods.

I've also been put on BP meds, it's set up on the GPs' system as a repeat prescription and I can request the repeat online. The GP OKs it (I assume it takes her less than a minute to do so) and it then goes automatically to my chosen chemist for dispensing. All done through https://www.patientaccess.com.

I believe the 28 days protocol came in to deal with the problem of people ending up with lots of expensive unused meds when they were given 6 months worth at a time. It also ensures the GP has to ask themselves every month (when they OK the repeat prescription) if the patient should still be on meds / should be getting a blood test this time e.g. to ensure BP meds aren't affecting kidneys / should be having a full medications review (my mother was on 15 different tablets at one point). I think it's quite a helpful protocol overall.