What's your experience when it comes to getting GP appointments? And other questions...

Oh forgot to mention, after all the faff of getting an appointment if you manage to get one, if you need bloods you have to make an appointment with the treatment room, which then takes another 1+ weeks, and that's only if you manage to get an appointment in a time that suits, for example, I'm at college and it's just not possible for me to go during the week within college hours, but the whole place shuts for lunch so can't then either.

I was recently sent to have bloods done but I haven't had them done as I can't make any of the times.

Spirael that is a good point about clinics. The surgery does sat clinics for flu shots, and are open until 8pm on 3 nights of the week for late appointments. I think they are bringing in online appointment booking too.

The surgery seems to be very good appointment wise, but is it a smallish practice and I know that patients at the other surgery in this area have not been so lucky with their appointment system. It is very hit and miss. Have lived in lots of areas in the past and it seems that it is very dependant on the doctors/management within the practice as to how the appointments system works.

The small surgery we go to operates a system where people can't usually book more than a week in advance which does make it easier to get an appointment reasonably quickly. It can be frustrating where the doctor has said "come back in (for example) two weeks" as you can't book that while you are there, although sometimes the gp's override the system.

for urgent same day appointments - have never had a problem but have rarely needed one

Have never tried to book an appointment the same day - but the surgery also does a walk-in service which I could go to if needed. Have only needed a couple of times. Waiting times vary on how busy it is. On a couple of occasions I've gone first thing in the morning, not been able to stay because of work (wanted to be seen fairly quickly as pregnancy issues, but not bad enough to stop me working) and the receptionists have said that if I call before leaving work they can tell me how busy it is and if need be put me on the list before I've arrived (but the only times this has happened it's been empty so they've not needed to).

Booking advance appointments is also easy. As it's a group practice there's not much continuity of care (high gp turnover). But the only time I've had trouble was one year I was unable to get an out of work time appointment for my flu jab. (GP did it - never again...) Booking can be done in person, by phone or online. Prescriptions repeats can't be phoned in but can be ordered online.

The reception staff are brilliant though. In addition to the walk in thing above - when we found out that a recent prescription request hadn't gone through the system correctly when I went to collect it and it wasn't there. The receptionist printed it off and quickly went and got a dr to sign it.

Will quite miss the receptionists when I change surgery in a couple of weeks (it's near where I work, so changing to one nearer home with the start of mat leave).

It used to be really good.
There were limited emergency appointments that could be booked for the same day (if you could get through) between 8 and 8:30am. There were some appointments later in the day for the next day for emergencies illnesses, plus there was a set of appointments reserved for come down immediately appointments. There there middle term appointments for on going/long term stuff and were released 48hrs before the appointment
And then there were long term appointments - generally for follow ups

Now you ring to make an appointment and then the GP/triage nurse rings you back, finds out the problem and books an appointment if necessary. Appointments for blood tests etc are still booked by the receptionist though.
it is a lot of faff and hanging about. But it has resulted in me seeing a GP with the hour recently. So there may well be good clinical reasoning behind this and as it is a new system I shall hold judgement for now.

My current surgery is actually very, very good. They have online appointments and you can usually make one at your leisure for within the next week or so if you're not fussy about which doctor you see.

For a same day appointment you can either try and get through on the phones at 8am, turn up at the door and join the queue, or keep hitting refresh on your PC/phone screen until the slots for the day release at 8am and then jump on one - usually for the first hour if you're quick. The latter being my preferred method and pretty reliable so far!

Children are usually seen within the hour if needed, regardless of when you call. They offer same day telephone consultations with the nurse/doctor. They already have an evening service and a weekend service that they're currently considering extending. They're also considering offering video consultations!

Love my surgery so much. :) Much better than the previous one I was at, where if you worked a 9-5 job and couldn't afford to take an entire day for the chance of getting seen at some point then you had zero chance of an appointment, ever.

Our surgery used to be phone in the morning to book an appointment, worked fine. They then added open surgeries, great!

Then they changed it to emergencies on the day only and it was not unusual to wait nearly a month for an appointment.

A month or so back they changed it to phone in the morning for an appointment in the morning, phone at lunch for an appointment in the afternoon. Most days I phoned in the morning and all appointments for the day were gone, no option to book in advance to kept being told to call back the next day.

This morning I phoned, started calling just before they were due to open, it took 26 calls before they answered and the last call was a 15 minute wait while it rang. Was answered and told that they are now only offering phone appointments and a Doctor will phone back and decide if you need to be seen!

Luckily I was called back in a couple of hours and did get an appointment for late afternoon, I was then nearly late to pick the kids up from nursery as it was a 50 minute wait in the surgery.

We have to phone tomorrow to book an appointment for both kids due to a constant cough that has been going on months that we haven't been able to sort.

Really looking forward to it. :(

I have a fantastic surgery. Ringing on the day you can usually get same day. Appointments ahead of time are trickier and you can wait three weeks sometimes but if there's any doubt they will get you in the emergency list.

They are particularly brilliant with children or children related issues eg pregnancy or post birth. On one occasion when I realised I was developing mastitis I called and the women said if I could get down there in 20 minutes she would make sure a dr saw me. This was at about 3 pm.

What is interesting is that friends and family in my area do not have the same experiences at their surgeries. Which makes me think it is absolutely down to the management of our surgery. I don't know who is in charge of managing things but whoever does is clearly very effective. I believe the government should really investigate better qualified, non medical management for gp surgeries. I want my gp to be a good dr. I don't expect her to be brilliant at managing staff or appointments systems.

I agree with a poster up thread who commented on having utmost respect for the doctors themselves. They are categorically friendly, helpful and sympathetic. I am also dazzled by the fact that our regular gp seems to genuinely remember us, especially ds, when I know she has a massive patient list and it's not like we go in there for anything particularly memorable.

Our surgery runs a triage system, you call between 8:30 and 10:30am and ask to be put on the triage list. There is an afternoon triage list too but I think that has a half hour slot.
Then the duty GP calls you back and discusses what ails you and makes a decision based on what you tell them. Then they either make you an appointment for that morning, or write you a prescription or a fit note or book you in with the nurse.

It works really well and I've never not been able to get what I need from the surgery. If I want to book an appointment with a particular doctor then I may have to wait 2 weeks, especially as my preferred GP is part time.

Useless. It is impossible to book a routine or non-urgent appointment much in advance even if you know you need to see doctor (or asthma nurse - there used to be one) regularly for medication review. You can only book three weeks in advance but then there seem to be hardly any appointments so you are advised to phone up on the day on the off chance. Not much good off you work two hours away from home and have a diary of fixed appointments that cannot be moved yourself. Genuine urgent cases like infections that could turn into blood poisoning are dealt with pretty well either by doc or practice nurse who can prescribe at end of practice (5pm). Again not brilliant for workers but okay if genuine emergency. Practice used to have early (7am) appointments on Fridays which was brilliant for workers but they stopped it as apparently there wasn't the demand which I find hard to believe!

Online ordering of repeat perscriptions would be great. I have to apply for mine in writing and either post to or drop it into the surgery (15 mins drive away) and then go back to collect 2 days later.

Ours is excellent. If you call before about 11am you'll usually get an appointment that day. In fact, I find it harder to book appointments in advance for routine things like my migraine checks.

We also have an amazing walk-in clinic a mile or so away which is staffed by local GP's and surgery staff on a rota basis. We've visited there often with emergencies and always been seen within an hour and received good treatment. I hear they're planning to close it down which is a real shame.

My surgery has an online service for routine appointments. Usually you will need to wait about 2 working days for a planned appointment with any named doctor. If you want a particular doctor then you may need to wait longer because some work part time. For same day emergency appointments you call from 8 for morning surgery and from 1.30 for afternoon appointments. This is not with a named doctor, but they are all good. You can't book emergency appointments online, or appointments with other HCP's eg, practice nurse. This would be useful. Appointments can only be booked one week in advance, so this means that you never have the situation where the next available slot is in three weeks. I'm sure this also reduces forgotten appointments.

Repeat prescriptions can be ordered online and are sent straight to the pharmacy. This is useful.

The receptionists are generally friendly and welcoming. The only thing that could be improved is that it can be difficult to get through on the phone, and not just at the morning rush. As I use online services this doesn't affect me personally, but I think it must be hard on those without computer access.

I know that I am very lucky to have such a well run GP practice. It has about 6 partners and also trains new GP's. My previous practice was very different, it had one GP and nurse. But that was great too, but different and the receptionists there were dragons. That practice had continuity of care, my current one less so. But it's always possible to request a named GP, so this isn't a massive problem. I suspect my current practice has an effective practice manager.

Appointments for me or DH can be a bit of a nightmare. The doctors appointments normally have a 7 day wait.

Last time i had to wait 10 days for an appointment to see the nurse for a repeat perscription for my contraceptive pill (i'd changed so was on trail of 3 months and phoned when i realised i was about to run out). By the time i got appoinment & had the perscription filled i was nearly 8 hours late taking my pill

Appointments for DC is normally within a couple of days and i can normally get one after school hours. They didn't transfer DD's immunisation records over properly when we moved to the surgery so i keep getting chased to take her for her 2nd MMR. She's 12

Our GPs is good. You can always see someone the same day if you turn up before 9am. If you have a young child you call at 10am and they usually see you by 11am - they do that so under 5s don't have to wait with adults. They also so afternoon appointments available.

Yes we have the urgent, reasonably easy if you don't mind sitting pressing redial at 8am.

Which is really helpful for getting non ill DCs off to school.

None urgent is awful, no concept at all of sometime this week and the further into the future appointments are like hens teeth.

You ring and are told they are all full, but some more 'might' be released in three days.

I've given up, I use urgent appointments for everything.

My main observation (living in the South East) is that the NHS is very English. As in: English notions like queuing and social niceties and so on are very prevalent and other approaches frowned upon.

If you're not from an English background and you display non-English responses (eg to stress, where I come from we don't do passive aggressive, we are more direct - this doesn't mean rude) then you can be very badly treated by admin (and sometimes medical) staff, and not have your concerns adequately heard in my experience.

You get written off as rude or a crank very easily unless you play a part as "an English person" (since I started pretending to be English whenever dealing with the nhs I've had much more success at getting good care).

We live fairly rurally (still in a town of 10,000 people though) and there's something of a recruitment crisis for GP's here, there simply aren't enough to cover the population. Ooh is horrendous. It used to be based in town just a few minutes walk from us. Now it's moved to the nearest city 25 miles away and an hour's drive away!

At our GP'S you ring at 8am and 1pm for appointments that day or next morning. Of course like most other GP's the appointments are all gone by time you get through at 10 past.
If you have to make a follow up visit for a weeks time you used to be able to book that in advance but now you have to join the frantic hordes redialling each morning. getting an appointment after school times as ridiculous as well. They want you dying before it is classed as an emergency and seem to think that a routine appointment for a child should be in school time (like the dentists as well who refuse to give children a before or after school appointment)

Frankly it is a piss poor way to run a surgery. It is always full of OAP's who have learnt the knack of getting through first time.

Not possible to get an appointment for 2-3 weeks. If you say it's urgent, "someone will call you back" and they don't. No wonder people go to A & E. Actually, if you are ill at the weekend, the service is better, and you can get to see a doctor relatively quickly and easily (although it will often not be anywhere near where you live).

At our GP you have to call bang on 8am for morning appt or bang on 3pm for afternoon
8am is when I get in the car for school run, 3pm is when I'm waiting at the gates
No not convenient times is what I'm saying!

My surgery is great, sit and wait system for urgent stuff. Teen drop in clinic
Pharmacy on site. Appointments from 7am. Lovely gps

My surgery is brilliant. Lines open at 8:30am and you are pretty much guaranteed an emergency appointment if you call during morning surgery hours. The afternoon has the same system. There is also the facility to have a gp phone you, and non-emergency appointments can be booked up to four weeks ahead. Huge practice of eight partners plus several more salaried GPs and two trainee GPs, also three practice nurses, a sessional physio, a phlebotomist and one of the GPs is a surgeon so does various bits and bobs. You can also make appointments online (non-emergencies only) and request repeat prescriptions the same way. They even have a queuing system for the phone lines that tells you where in the queue you are.

Very impressive. I luffs my surgery, not that I use it that often, but when I do it isn't a struggle though the parking is awful.

I book my advance appointments on an app on my phone which is great. Getting a same day appointment involves ringing repeatedly from 8 am but it's usually possible. And the receptionists and the doctors are all nice. However I do often feel rushed and as if I can't talk about more than one problem (I always have multiple).

We too seem to have nothing between scramble for emergency appointment at 8.30, and 3 weeks time. Sometimes, when I need to make an appointment time for out of work hours (after 4, or before 8.30, or between 12.30 and 1.30), I'm told there is nothing available with any doctor at any time.

However, I have recently had a lot of success with "I don't know how quickly I/Child needs to be seen but these are the symptoms" I usually get an appointment that day (so was it an emergency?), or a call back from the GP, which is really useful.

They have been really good with small people, and getting them fitted in with an appropriate person. 30 mins later with DS2 a few months ago, and then we were in for probably another 30 mins - with the nurse initially, who then went to get a GP. So apologies to anyone who was waiting for an appointment after us.

However we have one GP at the surgery who is totally uninterested in little people, and babies in particular. It would be useful if they blocked his appointments for anyone over X yrs of age. He really has no idea, and is dangerously out of date in his knowledge - my baby was apparently starving as I was breastfeeding, and hadn't introduced solids at 5 months.