GP didn’t call me because their “workday has ended”

Take two paracetamol sweetheart. You’ll be fine in the morning

Yes the will ring 999. But fun fact - emergency services will nearly always put them lower priority than a call of the same nature from the public. As the person in the GP surgery is in a “safe place” and has a doctor with them.
that GP might not have equipment or the drugs to give fluids or antibiotics for example though. So yes a Doctor is there, but often there’s not much they can do to help the patient but the patient often waits longer.

also the doctor might be trying to refer the patient and this can take a long time e.g. to specialists in the hospital or trying to get community mental health services to get involved with a patient.

GPs are left to deal with a lot of stuff that they shouldn’t have to deal with sometimes.

I am not a GP. But I know damn well that the ambulance service deprioritises patients who are already in a GP surgery "because they're already in a safe place" and "they'll have a defibrillator". GPs have to wait way longer than the public for a 999 response.

Mine does. We have something called enhanced access
basically you can ring at 6pm and they’ll fit you in between 6pm-8pm. They also do Saturday mornings and Sunday mornings

Genuine question, not trying to provoke. If there had been an emergency at a GP Surgery taking hours to manage, surely they would have called Emergency Services ? GPs aren’t there to deal with emergencies.

They just don’t give a fuck any more 🤷🏼‍♀️

(bangs head against wall) but that is irrelevant because 3.40 (the time OP's appt was for) is highly unlikely to be the end of their working day!

And even if (very unlikely) this particular GP's set working hours are 9am to 3.40pm and there is no expectation they should ever have to work a second past that, then in that case the surgery shouldn't be booking appointments for them for 3.40pm - their last appointment should be 3.10 or even earlier to allow for appts overrunning, paperwork, etc.

Otherwise what happens if someone goes in at 3.38 and starts stripping off for a vaginal exam - according to you it's fine for the GP to just jump up and walk out the door, leaving them on the table legs akimbo?

Lots of things aren't an 'emergency service' but realistically you would still expect them to carry on until the job had been completed.

I doubt you'd be happy if you were at the theatre, it started a few minutes late so the actors just all stopped half way through the climactic final scene/song and walked out. Or were at a restaurant waiting for 3 hours for a meal, because the old chef had finished their shift and the new one phoned in sick, with nobody bothering to tell you? Or if you were 2 mins late to pick up your child but when you arrived they were nowhere to be seen because the school/nursery had kicked the kids out and locked the building the second the school day ended? Or your plumber/electrician left you without a working boiler/flushing toilet/any lights because they needed to get home to their kids and couldn't take 5 minutes more to fix your issue?

It's really unfortunate and frustrating for you but it's healthcare right now. Theres a huge amount of pressure on the service. Emergencies turn up, things happen outside of their control. If they stayed until everyone had been seen it sounds like that could be multiple hours late every evening, which isn't realistic when they have to pick up a child from after school club or whatever like everyone else. Most (all I've ever come across) GPs already work a huge amount of time outside of their working hours without ever expecting to get paid for it but everyone has a limit.

What an absolute load of BS.

You and nobody else on this thread has ANY idea why OPs phone appt did not happen. You’re just making unfounded assumptions. E.g. There could have been a really unwell patient - heart attack, sepsis, mental health crisis etc (that can take hours to manage).

A doctor is a human being, not a machine, and entitled to a personal life outside of work. They aren’t there to work unpaid constantly because the public want them to.
Not working for free, does not make a doctor (or anyone else) lazy or not a role model.

you are what’s wrong with current society - just want, want, want, want and don’t care about anyone else but yourself.

I think that’s fine, but I bet in the majority of those jobs if they don’t finish something, they, or somebody else has to deal with it the next day. Not just throw their hands up and say, oh well, never mind.

Yes, nothing to do with us having an ageing population creating more need for GP services than when the elderly were a smaller percentage of patients.

I'm surprised the GP put their coat on and left before finishing their list, or at least passing it to another doctor in the surgery.

We have to do the 8am battle. Tried last week and was number 14 in the queue. Got to the front and there were no appointments. I think it's BS that they're inundated. Even when you go to the surgery theres never more than a couple of other patients waiting. No way are they rushed off their feet.

I did an e consult for ds over a limb problem (he’s disabled) and asking for an apt for referral to orthotics (I’d spoken to the centre his consultant works at).

They gave me a phone call.

The receptionist was brilliant when I quiered how they expected to assess a limb over a phone and asked if it could be moved to face to face.

she rang up to someone who agreed!!!

I doubt anyone would go to A&E if it wasn't urgent and they knew what the waiting time could be.

The podistrists with kids all work very part time because they have other committments. We dont have any full time working parents here unless their partner is a SAHM.

Doesn’t surprise me. My ex was a trainee GP working in a surgery and had failed his entrance exam multiple times.

He used to get a Friday off and 2 hour lunch breaks. Still he would winge his workdays were too long.

@DonnaBanana thats absolutely not the case. GP already put many many hours over time unpaid. It’s not because they don’t see patients that they aren’t working.
The last thing I’d say is that theyre just selfish. I fell that’s unfair and not reflecting the reality tbh

YY to asking for an OOH appointment.

Fwiw that’s what I was told to do when I was struggling with my previous surgery. Apparently it counts in their stats (so they hate it…) and never tell patients about it.
But it’s also the right thing to do if you can’t get an appointment or if, like the OP, you had an appointment but it just ‘vanished’

This is where the modern attitude bites. Once upon a time a doctor would be conscientious and put the effort into their job as a respected member of society and role model. Now it’s employment law this, union that, strike this, my rights that, and society is no better off for it. The me me me generation.

I joined a new surgery last year.
i can send an e consultation in the am and get appointment in the afternoon. Not something I’d classify as urgent btw.
They run sessions around menopause and different other type of illnesses so people can 1- ask questions, 2- support each other as patients. They even have a ‘keep fit’ walk once a week.

Its a standard GP surgery.

I think a lot of the problems we all have is down to organisation issues. My previous surgery was like the OP. It shouldn’t happen. Being late by two hours is disorganisation (too many people booked, forgetting someone is off, whatever). Not an issue with a couple of patients that have complex problems.

People in salaried roles needing to leave on the dot and people in salaried roles doing unpaid overtime are both sufficiently common that nobody has any excuse for not knowing about the existence of either.

It may have been unavoidable here, and just because you want there to be capacity within the practice to cover at short notice doesn't mean it exists. However it takes the piss for OP to be expected to phone again tomorrow. The number of same days for Friday should be reduced to accommodate those cancelled today.

Based on your username, I live in a neighbouring health board area and we have a really good, dedicated out of hours service so hopefully you do too. I also work in healthcare and agree that it’s not a good enough response to send a generic text, two hours after you were supposed to be “seen” and not offer you priority next day appointment. Hopefully a call to 111 can get your pain sorted, hope the ortho appointment doesn’t take too long.

YABU but also they will have triaged the calls that were overbooked and anyone potentially at risk of needing urgent treatment/a&e will have been put first so they did fit within the day.

I presume yours was more routine/less serious. I realise this a total PITA.

I'm often surprised by how varied GP surgeries are.

At ours, you fill in an online form during their working hours, including symptoms and availability. And then you get an appointment, either telephone or in person depending on the problem, and usually that day or the next, or otherwise sometime in the next week, depending on the problem.

The forms are a bit of a faff if using a phone. And you usually have to wait a few minutes if you call. I've seen a couple of not-brilliant doctors there, but most of the nurses and doctors have been excellent.

Why aren't most people's GP surgeries as good as this? It's the same funding as the rest of England I'd assume.

When I read about NHS experiences on mumsnet I slightly dread ever leaving my area!