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

Why would the majority of people sitting in A&E not need to see a doctor? How would they know?

I had to sit for hours with my daughter as we’re worried she had broken her wrist. She hadn’t as it turns out and the only thing she could do was rest it. So obviously we hadn’t needed to have gone as they didn’t do anything for her but if we hadn’t gone how would we have known it wasn’t broken?

What might be obvious to a GP with years of medical training might be less obvious to the rest of us.

Pharmacy? I went there 3 times and every single time was sent back to GP .

My friend said 80% of his appointments were taken up by 20% of patients and mostly they were time wasters who wanted to complain they had a cold etc.
Ours has a mostly good online system now which probably helps those who are online.

Tbh mil is a GP botherer. She found out it would take a few years for a knee replacement and she has very mild arthritis so wanted on the list now. She was told she had uncomplicated gall stones (not causing any issue) and she went back three times saying heavy happy that they wouldn’t take the stones out. Even explaining that it is surgery to remove the gall bladder not a simple case of removing the stones had no effects. She seems to be there at least 3 times a month despite not being unwell. She has high blood pressure and mild arthritis is one knee.

Exactly. How many people dismiss symptoms which later turn out to be cancer.

A GP is medically qualified. Exactly the point

Also those who do not seek an appointment when they do need one, for various reasons.

By that logic you could say that, for example, 90% of antenatal appointments are unnecessary because 90% of pregnancies are complication free. The number is made up, I don't know how many pregnancies are really free of complications but it illustrates the point. But nobody sane would suggest we cut antenatal care by 90%.

People need to be able to see a health professional when they are worried. Inevitably, this will lead to some appointments being made unnecessarily but without them lots of true medical issues would be missed.

How are patients supposed to know what is worthy of an appointment or not? That's what the triage system is for.

Unfortunately it didn't work for my parent who visited the GP 5 times with severe back pain and generally feeling awful. My parent was in their forties. The were told it was a pulled muscle, exhaustion and referred to a physio (wait to see them was months). My parent paid for a private GP appointment and was very shortly afterwards diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. 6 months later they were dead. I shouldn't make myself feel worse by looking at information online but from what my medically untrained brain can work out, if they were referred and diagnosed when they originally saw the GP, I might not have been at their funeral when I was a very young adult.

Would their appointments be put down to time wasting? Because thats what they were told on each of those 5 appointments.

I know my family is not the only ones to have gone through this.

And this was in 2003. My bad, I should have just died

They need to do AI telephone or facetime appts, that would be able to deal with 80% of all enquiries and it would give the doctors more time to concentrate on more important concerns.

I Could not walk. Ie not walk out of my bed , which is why I called an ambulance 😵‍💫

Long may you have such a privileged and blessed life. One day you may discover why people need to see GPs and I hope they are there for you when you do.

The problem is

The pharmacist goes 'sorry no can do'
So you go to the GP and you get a mouthful for not going to the pharmacist, but you get what you actually need.
So you think 'whats the fucking point in going to the pharmacist'.
And you end up feeling like the GP is an uncaring jerk and the pharmacist is a jobsworth and neither care - you should be someone else's 'problem' which damages your trust in both of them.

OR you follow the awareness advice for x health issue, and you are told you are 'anxious' because the health marketing campaign is deliberately designed to make people anxious. But no one takes these charities to task for this scaremongering propaganda that has the effect of GP blocking appointments so people who NEED appointments can't get them. I'm sure that this action probably actually costs more lives than it saves but its hidden because this unintended consequence isn't measured. The health charity is 'doing good' after all. Margaret McCartney raised this issue of 'the worried well' over a decade ago.

OR you get people disengaging from health services completely, because they are sick of being talked to like shite, because they don't navigate the system 'correctly' by twatty uncaring HCP who are unprofessional in their attitude. So they don't seek help early and only engage when a problem has become much more serious (and costly to deal with). Having dealt with an issue with my son recently, what baffled me was the shockingly bad stuff who assumed you knew how the system worked and that you had all the relevant contacts - because they have so many frequent flyers that it doesn't enter their heads that no everyone is a bloody mind reader and is unfamiliar with it.

In every scenario it alienates patient and doctor which is a harm in its own right.

So I really do wish that these HCP would wind their fucking necks in and stop being pricks to their patients as it helps precisely no one.

They should be taking up such issues with NHS managers not patients.

Statistically many hundreds of people in your local area will be unwell at any one time. Some will have minor illnesess, others will recently have had injuries, others will have chronic illnesses and others will have acute and serious illnesses. It's a lot of people, unfortunately. It's definitely the case that some people overuse healthcare services, but the actual numbers are relatively small and there is usually a reason for them turning up so often - again, research has shown that if those people are giving the help they need (ending isolation, social support) they stop attending.

I was able to do this via the GP's online system. Uploaded photo of manky mole, requested a referral to a private dermatology consultant, GP sent the referral within 2 hours.

It actually took 3 times longer to get it approved by my insurer!

Or, I’ve been suffering for nearly a decade and don’t want to live my life like this anymore

Most my GP appointments aren't needed they are insisted on by the GPs for their paperwork and liability.

Annual check ups for lifelong conditions that have never changed, prescription reviews, referral pre-meetings just so they can send a letter to the specialist I need to see.

Basically NOTHING happens in them, just a polite hello, followed by a 'has anything changed' and then a 'OK, fine come back in 6 months'. I have questioned it several time but have been told they have to see you even if its just to send a bloody letter between departments. Its a PITA for me too as I have to find a way to get there.

They shouldn't be.
It wasn't what I meant.

oh man, those poor GPs. I bet the GP we saw many times before my child was diagnosed with a brain tumour (by A&E) would have said the same thing, why are these two back again droning on about their little one having headaches and vomiting in the night….. the eye rolls we received were real.

If only we didn’t need them to make referrals to specialists.

No, just everyone else can’t possible be unwell. The majority of people sitting in A&E, do not need to be there. The majority of people wanting to see the GP, do not need to see one.

@sandyhappypeople there is a self injectable contraceptive called sayana press. I switched to it so I didn’t need to deal with the faff of the nurse appointment in the right time frame. I don’t mind injecting myself though, I know some people hate it.

I'm aware. It's still the case that it works and it saves money. It's nothing to do with being perfect, it's everything to do with having a properly functining healthcare system.

Well yes, the GP system has become a national "fob you off" system.

What a weird way to see the world - you're fine so everyone else must also be fine?