Anyone a nurse in a GP surgery? Is this normal?

[ScottishMum03]

I’ll start by saying, I’m fully aware of how bad things are in the NHS at the moment!!

Routine smear test booked for mid December. Phonecall from the receptionist the day before to reschedule it for the following week. Annoying, but fine. Next week comes - phonecall 2 days before to reschedule it for mid January.
Phonecall then comes at 5.45pm the night before to reschedule for a 3rd time. They now can’t give me an appointment until 1st week in February.

Very frustrating as that’s now 3 times I’ve rescheduled work unnecessarily. I asked the receptionist yesterday why they kept having to reschedule and was told that there’s only certain nurses that will carry out smears and my appointments keep being schedules in when none are working 🤔
Is it normal for only certain nurses to carry out smears? I thought it was a fairly standard test for nurses to do? All the nurses in the GP surgery are experienced nurses that have been there a long time and I’m sure I’ve had the majority of them over the years!

I'm guessing they've probably got a lot of sickness in the surgery. There's a lot of flu/covid/random viruses doing the rounds. As smears are routine they would be cancelled ahead of clinics dealing with more urgent things like on the day triage etc.

To be a cervical smear taker requires additional training and then to be signed off as competent by an external trainer.

Most practice nurses have this training but not necessarily all.

My smear took about 4 months to sort in the end - for the same reason. Had to be cancelled twice then no appointments. So I think normal.

At my surgery there is only one nurse out of six who does smears. Each nurse runs her own special clinic. Personally I think it's better if the service is run this way as exams are done properly and one nurse for one service means they do regular training and has updated information.

Yes this is unfortunately plausible.
Smear taking is a specific skill and has its own course which has to be kept up to date.

No idea about the training but it's an issue everywhere. Our dental appointments got cancelled 3 times from a year ago. Then when it finally came around we missed it because we came down with flu /covid/ some grotty bug.

I’m a nurse practitioner in a GP surgery. I work with 2 other nurses and we all do smears however we’ve been absolutely wiped out by illness recently so “routine” stuff like smears have been rebooked so we can cover for each other and squeeze in all the urgent stuff.

Also some places (like mine) have dedicated clinics set aside for smears (longer appointments and when an appropriate room is available, for example.)Some consulting rooms might not have a couch, or a lamp for example. If the nurse is to be working in one of those rooms she can’t do certain things.

It sounds mad but space is such an issue - we almost room hop and as we now utilise Physicians Assistants, community pharmacists, physios, wellbeing teams etc rooms are at a premium!

Its frustrating for you I know, primary care is under so much pressure at the moment and we know we’re not always offering the services our patients deserve. 😕

Thanks all 👍🏻 seems like it is the norm after all!

@Sidge I know staff absence has been a big issue among the GPs so the same is probably true of the nurses. And I hadn’t even considered the space issue. Makes a lot of sense!
I have a friend who was diagnosed with an aggressive 3C2 cervical cancer after her routine smear being postponed for a year during covid (absolutely no other symptoms!) so these things being delayed makes me feel a bit anxious but understandably, emergency and urgent appointments have to take priority with things being the way they are just now!

I has this, I paid and did my own hpv test. Got it from superdrug.