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

There’s been times I just need a bit of advice, don’t need anything actual appointment. Just some medical advice, yet you have to fight for and book an appointment.
seems such a waste of time when a quick phonecall would do.

💯

I get that same impression too. Before I’ve even started speaking, steeling myself against their likely perception that I’m wasting their time. Even when I am definitely not. It’s quite strange isn’t it.

After a few days of severe banging headache that otc painkillers barely touched, I submitted an online request to my surgery, fully expecting to get a telephone call or just a prescription for something stronger, at best.

Surprisingly, I got a message with a face to appointment the next working day, albeit with a physio, not a doctor. He wanted to rule out temporal arteritis and made an urgent referral. I had an initial appointment at the "urgent care" clinic the next day, along with a scan, bloods and x-rays, saw the consultant the following day and was having a biopsy 2 working days later.

I was really impressed, although I'm not enjoying the massive dose of steroids I've had to take for the last few weeks. A friend has had a very positive experience with the same practice recently, too: taken seriously and prompt referral to a consultant.

It's just as well they're good, because there's only one GP practice serving a small town and the surrounding rural area, so no choice. There used to be 4, but they merged a few years ago.

How is that a waste? At least your GP has accepted that your condition wasn't something they can treat as GPs My late dad was fobbed off with minor for years. He was eventually taken to hospital with sepsis and late stage T cell peripheral Lymphoma

How do GPs expect patients to know whether their illness is worthy of a GP visit?

GPs train for years to be able to diagnose the vast array of conditions that their patients present with - most of us do not have the benefit of all that knowledge and expertise - that is WHY we go to the GP.

I trained as a nurse, back in the last century, and although I do have some knowledge as a result, I don’t always know whether something is GP-visit worthy - so how are people with no medical knowledge supposed to know??

OP, was your appointment one of the useful 20% or did it fall into the 80%?

Did your GP have any ideas how to solve this?

Women get told this far more frequently than men.
We battle with health issues for an average of 8 years before formal diagnosis.
It's a lack of joining the dots in many cases, men who don't keep up to date with female issues. Women around my way leave practices specifically so they can have a female doctor, because they actually try to solve root causes and issues rather than just prescribing anti-depressants and wondering why that doesn't keep you away.

I don’t believe your GP, OP. I don’t know anyone who gets pointless appointments with the GP. Quite the reverse! IME people are reluctant to see their doctor, partly because most people don’t really like it, and partly because it’s such an unbelievable hassle. As it takes so long to get an appointment, by the time I see my GP, I have normally diagnosed myself and outlined a course of treatment.

But you are missing the point.
If we multiply my experience and that of others on this thread, that's an awful lot of "time wasting" appointments that never should have been put in that category. But the GPs can't /don't go back over "timewasting" appointments from years ago to learn what they missed and reflect on it.

Maybe what we need is whenever there is a delayed diagnosis and alert can go to every GP that saw the patient and missed it, so they can reflect on their practice and balance that into their view of "time wasters".

Because maybe I did go with colds because they made me feel dreadful. That's because I now know that my underlying (then undiagnosed) condition means I do feel very unwell with "just a cold". In fact , "just a cold " can land me in ICU .

Similar story here. Viewed as a hypochondriac and time waster for over a decade, but now have multiple diagnoses, all of which I had to work out by myself and push to be seen by specialists

I would be very sceptical that it's 80%, and in fact if it is thought to actually be that high, then I'd presume it is because the GPs are missing stuff

I think my worry with this kind of statistic are how many of these unnecessary appointments are women being fobbed off with anxiety/normal perimenopause rather than having their pain and other symptoms taken seriously.

I can't recall the stat but the average wait for endometriosis referral (? or treatment?) is about 10 years. Women live with debilitating and progressive pain with this condition. I would bet real money that most of the times they try to access help in that 10 year period, the GP would categorise those appts into the 80%. It's a normal part of being a woman, have you tried taking ibuprofen, if you won't go on the pill there is nothing more I can do etc.

I don't doubt that there are people who waste GPs time with unnecessary appointments but I've had two serious medical issues that ended up requiring hospital treatment where I've had to be persistent with multiple appointments because they brushed me off the first couple of times.
I'm guessing my first appointments for those issues would be categorised as time wasting.

Only 80%? I am surprised it is not higher.

The assumption seems to be that most people on lifetime meds could drop dead at any moment and then their unused meds will form some sort of mountain. It's ridiculous.

Many GPs have areas of specialist interest which are usually detailed on the website. They do many years of training yet you think you can call them useless. What are your qualifications, I wonder?

We have an app for a lot of things, but it doesn’t let you make appointments. Very annoying!

I think you have predicted the future for sure! It’s the way everything else is going and with the more advances in technology, you’re almost certainly right.

I think that a GP who goes into every appointment thinking that there's only a 20% chance of it being worth their time is a GP who's potentially going to be missing anything that isn't blindingly obvious.

My GP has never said anything like that to me. He'd rather people came for the stuff that turns out not to matter than didn't come for the stuff that does.

Every single time I’ve been to a pharmacist, they tell me they don’t know and I should see the GP. Or they do know, but I would be better to see a GP for certain.

My daughter had a rash that flared up badly whilst we were on holiday in England. It was clearly a dermatology issue, one she’d had frequently, easily spotted and treated with a fairly low power steroid cream. We told the pharmacist about the history and what she had been treated with. Pharmacist said they couldn’t prescribe that.

How can it be 'reasonable ' to agree to people wasting a GP's time?
The onus is on the GP practice to ensure patients know what they can do without needing to see one of them.

I expect my parents GP would have said the same thing about both of them. Dad had 4 GP appointments over 1 year and was diagnosed with cancer via an A&E admission by ambulance from home.

My mum visited the same GP 3 times in the course of a few months and was also diagnosed through an A&E admission that I insisted upon and took her to.

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

My own GP rolled his eyes at me on my 3rd visit to him (for the same symptoms, I knew what was wrong with me and told him this) during which I insisted on a blood test which showed a chronic autoimmune condition. He ate some humble pie on the phone when he called me to tell me the result 'you were right', well, yes I knew that. Idiot.

I don't have too much faith in them now, unfortunately.

A GP friend of mine told me that on hot sunny days the number of patients who dont turn up or cancel appointments rises dramatically. She said they know it will be quiet in surgery when the weather is nice!
I only make GP appointments when I absolutely need one so what the weather is doing would be irrelevant, however it would seem there is a significant number of people who make appointments that even they know are not needed or urgent as if the sun is shining they sack them off!
Also the people suggesting patients should self refer for consultant appointments - what?!?! Can you imagine if the general public could just decide they need a consultant without the GP gatekeeping? It would be absolute chaos with total timewasters booking consultant appointments left, right and centre.
I think a PP has already said it, when people receive something for free they perceive it has no value so abuse it with abandon.

Our GP surgery wouldn’t give you an appointment if you didn’t need one. You have to be triaged first and only those close to death would be granted an appointment this side of the next Olympics.

Same my GP operates like this and it’s reasonably easy to get an appointment which suggests that the system works, ie they’re not wasting lots of appointments on people who don’t need them.

We have similar. It's really really good and just proves that done right, things can be so much more productive.

I do agree though that there are times when pharmacists should be deployed more. Pharmacist and optician all agree I have blocked tear duct and infection... but I had to go into to get a prescription for antibiotics. At least it was a nurse practitioner rather than a GP.