To think GPs are on the whole useless

[yellowflowers]

Everytime I go to the GP they either confirm I have what I think I have or say that I haven't and then when I go back a week later still with symptoms tell me I was right all along. I really cannot see the point of them beyond being a barrier between us and prescription drugs and so they can refer us to specialists if you are clever enough to look up your own symptoms and treatments and know a good source from a bad source. I feel with the help of google I could do as good a job as most GOs - "oh hello Mr Smith, you have an itchy arm do you, you have 'itchyarmitis. Here's some itch cream and if that doesn;t work I will give you an itch pill" or "hello Ms Jones, you have found a lump have you. That's probably okay but I will send you to a specialist just in case it isn't."

Can you tell I have had an unproductive trip to gp today?

But really, I am yet to meet one who knows more than a relatively intelligent person with access to a computer and half a brain.

And I am not convinced that misdiagnosis are as rare as you say. Maybe it is because we hear more about them - or just maybe it is more common than we realised! There are no records kept and most patients do not complain. Even if they do (one of our GPs gets complained about regularly and has for the past 20 years!) nothing is done so people stop bothering.

Lots of jobs require years of training and hard work. Difference is that when qualified most professionals are not protected so if you are rubbish you lose your job or run out of clients!

Although I moan like hell about our useless GPs. They do have their advantages - firstly with one of them you tell him what is wrong with you and he then asks what you want done. If you ask for a referral you get it no quibbles. If you ask for a fit note (but tell him you need to be off work) he writes it. All a little too easy really.

The other one gives you whatever you want as long as you allow him to be a patronising arrogant so and so. Do that and you come out with what you went in for!

If you dont know what is wrong with you or what you want from it (referral etc) then you see the nurse who will actually diagnose you!

So I shouldnt complain really. As somebody said in the shop yesterday, you just have to hope you dont ever need them in a real emergency.

I would happily go to any of the GP's at our local practice. They are diverse in age, ethnic origin, equal mix of sexes. And yet who ever you see, they are non patronising, attentive, more than happy to hear you out and seem to get to know you as a family easily.

HOWEVER, I would add that it is a little village practice.

rofl @ 'itchy arm' & 'itchyarmitis'

Have you seen the latest ? The marvellous GP's you all love so much are going to be running the show ! Hospital care included (haha, wtf has that got to with GP's ? IME they can barely refer to the right speciality half the time). So now they're going to from medics to accountants. Fun, fun, fun

BBC article. Good old coalition

oh yey another bash the stupid GP's thread
You know what I'll just shut shop tomorrow, I'll tell the 100+ patient contacts a week I have that really I'm just a useless/lazy/ignorant/overpaid cow, and any half way intelligent person on MN can google and treat them I'll send them all your way OP if thats ok, if you have perhaps 12 hrs free a day?

The 500 diabetics I have really dont need to see me and be treated, they can all die from heart attacks/strokes/blindness/gangrene/kidney failure like they did 20 years ago!

Likewise those with heart disease and vascualr diease.

Oh and of course those with cancer needing terminal care, I'm sure you have a few hours a day to pop round and sort out their pain relief and symptom control, hold their hands and support their families.

The elderly housebound lady I saw today to treat her temporal arteritis (sorry Op, you do know how to recognise, diagnose, manage and maintain that dont you??), and then spent 20mins looking at old photos, listening to her war stories, I am sure she'll be just dandy without me??

The lovely gent who has been presenting on and off with non specific, vague symptoms who I finally worked out what the problem was, sent him for the right test, diagnoses his cancer, referred him rapidly to the correct specialist, told him the news and held his hand while he cried.

The old man and his wife who cant cope since he fell over and fractured his ribs and vertebra, so I spent over an hour today trying to access some uregent help so he could go to the toilet, oh yes while I was at it I precribed some decent painkillers so he can get some sleep!

Not to mention the demanding, winging masses of worried well, neurotic parents, minor ailments which really can be self treated!

All the while jumping through all the hoops the government sees fit to put in my way so I can indeed get paid!

OP not only are YBU, you are totally foolish, deluded,wrong and self absorbed You have no idea whatsoever what my job entails!!

Frog - no, you need doctors who understand why the referral pathways are crap and what actually happens to the patient. When you have managers trying to design systems with no health professionals, you end up with rubbish systems. Mostly, the systems haven't actually been designed at all - they've just grown, like Topsy.

I'm v worried about that initiative. Honestly, GPs are horribly clueless about mental health problems.

I also went to my GP about a knee problem, he basically said that I should expect to have pain sometimes. I self referred to physio and am working on correcting an out of place knee cap.

Yes, you are. (OP)

Hear hear macdoodle

any generalising thread will be anecdotal and not applicable to all.macdoodle you dont have to individually justify your day,differential diagnosis skills,or interventions

op has her pov,her lived experience.doesnt make it wholly applicable to all gp or you macdoodle.

if you are happy with your competencies,skills and input and know you do your best,then fair enough.

Haven't read all the posts but really agree...the problem is they see so many of the same minor ailments they just hear what they think you're saying instead of what you're actually saying; they don't ask questions around the problem or consider it holistically, and they tend to think that, if you've researched it yourself you're either trying to do their job for them, or a hypochondriac. They forget the most important fact - no-one knows your body - or your child's body, better than you do! Doctors need to learn to LISTEN.

This thread caught my eye because of recent experience. Normally I'm the kind of person to see a GP maybe around once a decade. However I've had more dealings with them since being pregnant and they've really pissed me off! Whilst I was pregnant I got a uti and a stomach bug that was REALLY vicious. Both times I had to go in three times before they'd look twice at me as it seemed to be an assumption I was pregnant/ hormonal/ whinging/ experiencing normal pregnancy niggles and not realising it as a silly woman. A few weeks after having my son me/ mum/ sister got food poisoning. Mum and sister given anti-biotics/ hydration sachets/ painkillers. Me? Just constantly asked if I have PND! I kept pointing out I was fainting/ shitting soup etc but no, just 'but how are you feeling in yourself?'. ARGH. Every bloody time I see GP/ HV/ Midwife I get 'how are you feeling in yourself?' concerned look. I want a t-shirt with 'NO, I've not got PND' for my six-week check on Thursday. They can't comprehend a pregnant woman/ new-mum isn't just making up symptoms because she's hormonal/ depressed. I will be driven to PND soon if I get another infection which I have to ride out for days whilst caring for a small baby. Especially if small baby also has bloody bug and is shitting/ screaming. Even though I had a womb infection in labour I couldn't get a check up once I'd left hospital when I developed a fever/ chills. Again 'how are you coping?'. Double ARGH.I'm really looking forward to getting them to check my stitches (not good), be amazed if I can get them to even look before they dismiss it with 'well it won't be the same now you've had a baby'/ 'it may take some time to return to normal'.

umm scottishmummy the OP was generalising that ALL GP's are crap and useless!
She was NOT ranting over her personal experience, she was extrapolating that to all GP's, as well as rubbishing a group of well trained professionals!
I was refuting that by trying to explain what a GP does, using personal but general examples, my post is a fairly typical example of a GP "day"!

Don't patronise me, you clearly didnt understand my pots, I feel no need whatsoever to defend my personal abilities/skills etc, I felt a need to defend my profession as a whole!

Shouldnt have bothered really, I have been around long enough to know how these threads go, wont bother anyhow, if you think all GP's are crap, the really simple answer is dont go, am sure they will be very pleased

The GPs in our local practise are brilliant so much so that the two who look after my ds i know by their first names! One of them even saw my ds when we turned up their on a saturday when he was off duty! My ds fell from a great height in our garden, my mum got in a panic five mins into the journey as he was falling asleep and stopped at GPs house! The following day we sent a very expensive bottle of wine to the surgery with a card saying thank you for letting us invade your house!!

1. most of us earn a lot less than £100,000!

2. before I was a doctor I thought being a GP was easy

3. when I was a junior doctor I KNEW being a GP was easy (surely I wouldn't have missed the diagnosis it took me several hours of research and expensive tests to work out in hospital in a 10minute consultation in a GP surgery )

4. when I was training to be a GP I started to realise it might be a little tricky at times.

5. only now I'm qualified do I understand why its so damn hard to do properly

6. I wouldn't see a nurse practitioner if you paid me despite knowing some excellent nurses.

You think you could do better? come on then - the training takes a minimum of 10 years, you have to work in hospitals first, do oncalls, weeks of night shifts, forget what your family and your house looks like, pay thousands of pounds to sit your exams and thousands more again when you are finished every year just to be allowed to continue in your job, you'll work long days and still be told you are lazy, see 30-40 patients a day plus home visits and telephone calls and paperwork, lunch? whats lunch, oh thanks for the tea - its gone cold again never leave on time and still be told you are paid too much, see 20 odd people with headaches in the course of the week, 4/5 of which are nothing serious but needs listening too and understanding as its affecting their life, a few will be seriousish - eg migraine, cluster headaches and can be helped but one of which MIGHT be serious - temporal arteritis. Then do it all again next week. Be shouted at, sworn at, physically threatened (and sadly sometimes attacked) and have to be 'understanding' because people act out when they are scared an ill..... and still not be able to afford to buy even a little house with a garden for your DCs to play in come on...whats stopping you??

yabu. have had a few bad experiences, but unfair to damn a whole profession who are highly trained and do a very difficult job.

YABU, we are lucky to have the resource and I wouldn't like to imagine life without it. the alternative is frightening.

That was kind of you lottie, you are welcome at our house any day

macdoodle,this is op lived experience and uncomfortable as it is to read it isnt specifically about you and nor do you need to justify yourself,or your skills.irrefutably in any profession a range of abilities and personalities exist

I don't know if I'd go as far as to call them useless ALL the time but same as stripeyknickersspottysocks, at my last GP appointment we were both reading the internet for the best remedy for my illness - he had as little clue as I had!

I wouldn't mind if it were some tropical disease, but I had hayfever!! (in his defene though, I am pg! )

well why do so many people go to the gp and why don't they stay at home with half a brain and a pc and look up there illness themselves?

At ekast then when I want an appointment I would be able to get one

though I have to say now our gp's do evening urgery on a monday and that fab

as for the nurse at my old practice she couldn't even diagnose impetigo in an 11 year old when I told her what is was - she told me it was cradle cap - a wek later the gp was furious as it had spread and hse lost her hair the size of a golf ball - so not all nurses are wonderful

'defence' that was supposed to say.

Also in their defence, I generally have very good experiences. I have a history of breat cancer in the family and my GP was brilliant when I had concen in that area - I couldn't have asked for more.

I have lived with a GP for 20 years, I know how hard they work, how much crap they put up with and how long their hours are.

I don't go to the GP very often or if I can possibly help it.

I agree with MudNRoses.

Tbh I have no problem with a GP hooking up to Google if he/she needs to find out more about something - they are doctors and more often then not they are overworked.
So they don't know about the new x, y or z - maybe that's because they are overworked, knackered and haven't had time to read it. Likewise there are many different remedies for minor ailments - if I was pg I would far rather my GP said "am not sure if this will be suitable" and got googling than prescribe me something I could not take.

I am off to see my lovely GP tomorrow and I will be grateful for her support and advice. My GP is brilliant and far from a waste of space.