To think all GP support staff are rude and evil!

[higgle]

Grr. Just come back from my GPs. On Monday I telephoned to ask for a GP apointment before Friday, the receptionist gleefully told me there were none. She then insisted there was only one nurse's appointment all week free and that was in my working day. When I said that was not convenient she moaned and groaned and fond me another at 6pm today. When I go;t there the nurse told me the receptionist should have asked me to make a AP's appointment, then proceeded to give me advice which contravenes the NICE guidance on the subject. When I pointed this out she was very stroppy with me. Why are receptionsists so rude and unhelpful? and why do nurses, who want to assume a professonal role never have up to date clinical evidence to support the nonsense they spout at you! And lastly why did they tell me they had no appointments when one of the lovely GPs came out ofhis room and announced to the receptionist that he was pleased he could go home early as it was quiet!!!

I don't actually see my GP that often - I'm very healthy, the nurse said my last appointment with a GP was over a year ago and it was 5 years before that - general impresions of the doctors come from their dealings with my oldest son who had a very serious problem that they were particularly helpful with.

GGirl ! I was very sympathetic when your dog died!

Higgle, I am sympathetic to your plight.
They sound like lunatics.
Am hooting at them telling you you 'couldn't be trusted' to make an appointment.

Barking!

Thank you moondog - we did in fact have some discussion on this syndrome in our office today and we came to the conslusion that District Nurses, who are invited onto other peoples home territory seem on the whole to be more friendly, jolly and easy going than practice nurses, who are seeing people on their patch. I think the two at my surgery are both very anti HRT, whereas my GP was quite enthusiastic, at the end of the day it is not really a good idea to wind patients up when you are going to take their blood pressure.

I will try to lose another stone and up my running a bit so that when I go back next I will be 120/80 straight away.

Higgle l find your attitude appalling. I am a practice nurse, and if it is true what you sat about your PN's, then l am really sorry you were treated in that way.
However your generalisation that all PN's are the same is insulting and basically shows you have a total lack of knowledge in this field. As they say one swallow doesn't make a summer
Many of us as more trained and qualified than some of the GP trainees that work in the surgeries and part of my job involves training these future GP's.
I admit l don't know everything, but who does....unless you think you do?
Stick to what you know and if you don't like your GP surgery staff then you are within your rights to move GP's, just it is our right to remove patients from our lists if we have a valid reason. To be honest, in our pracice, with an attitude like yours, you would be removed in a heartbeat,

No, I know very little! but I do try to do some research - and look at all views - on anything medcal that directly concerns me or my family. I doubt if anyone at our surgery would recognise me, my husband or DS2 in the street because we only go to the surgery very infrequently - DS2 has not been in 10 years, DH only once and I think I have been 3 times until I got HRT last year. I have my smears and maograms done privately because if I've got to take my clothes off and endure discomfort I want to be somewhere with a pleasant environment where I can be confident I'll be treated with respect ( Not a manky old van in a supermarket car park!)

DS1 had a pituitary tumour and the doctors were great with that ( didn't see any nurses then) I should think that on the whole we are perfect patients because we are so healthy. I have seen each of the practice nurses once and they were both perfectly horrible - the first berating me for being on HRT and telling me it would be my own fault when I got cancer - yet not being able to provide risk figures - and the second being totaly unprepared to back up the advice she was purporting to give with any empirical reasoning. AND she was very patronising in saying she didn't trust me to come back!

Higgle,
You must go to my surgery. All of the unqualified (by unqualified I mean non-medic) staff are utter, utter cunts.

I have to fight tooth and neck to avoid seeing a nurse and to get in to see a GP, then I'm given the third degree as to what's wrong with me...which if they're weren't glorified typists, I'd probably divulge.

Can't say they're all cunts, as I don't know them all. But the ones local to me definitely are.

Doha; in your surgery, do the nurses TRAIN the GPs? Or am I naive in thinking that GPs go to university for their training?

Er nurses go to Uni for their training?? So are certainly not unqualified. Are you being deliberately provocative?

Thanks, everyone - had not meant to be quite so contentious but most of the comments on here have sort of proved my point. People who work in health and Social Care should always understand that the people they deal with expect and deserve high standards. If the receptionsit and instructors at my gym behaved in the way the GP support staff do they would have no customers pretty quickly.

My dr surgery the nurse definitely trains the vts trainee gps. Obviously they go to uni and are qualified drs. But they're not qualified gps and have to do more training on the job, I think two years.

I've been the guinea pig for a trainee gp doing his first smear test. I was asked if I was happy with that btw and treated with a lot of respect.

Where I work in hospital the trainee gps come and work on our wards for four months. We have to train them big time. It's a bit of a joke really. As a midwife I'm not allowed to speculum or do a vaginal exam on anyone under 37 weeks. So I call the trainee gp and explain we have a 35 week lady with some tightenings. I show him the ctg, he looks blank and asks me if it's ok. Then he asks me what he needs to do. I tell him he needs to do a speculum. I go in as chaperone, stop him from inserting the speculum incorrectly. He finally manages to do it and then turns to me and asks "is that a cervix".

True story and one of many I could tell you about the qualified drs who work on our ward. But I'm just a lowly, lesser qualified midwife so what would I know?

I must be reading a different thread to you higgle as most of the posts on here disprove your comments.

Some doctors' receptionists sure can have the wrong attitude and be a real heart sink to deal with! They need to remember that people feel vulnerable and anxious when they're ill. Maybe the wrong types get attracted that kind of work.

This kind of attitude is what's made me pack my job as a GPs receptionist in. I get sworn at, shouted at and threatened on a weekly basis, all for £7 an hour. We are all just trying to earn money, not doing the job because we like to be nasty to people. Most of the time we are just following policy (and there's a lot of that). Yesterday, a man told me I was an ugly bitch just because he hadn't been made aware that we now only prescribe 2 months worth of medication, despite the fact that it's all over our website and letter were sent to EVERY patient to advise this.

What we are finding more and more is that the NHS has created a kind of 'me' culture where everyone thinks they are entitled to things they are not - the NHS can't cope with this attitude IMO.

If a receptionist tells you they have no appointments, it's because there are none - the 4 most popular doctor's at our surgery are fully booked for the next 3 weeks.

If you don't like it, you can always register at another surgery instead!

Mrs Fruitcake I'm sure you're an exception to the rule - and a good receptionist, but I've come across a few unkind ones in my time at both sides of the counter. I also work in GP surgeries.

"glorified typists"... wish LadyOfTheCuntryManor would go and do the job for a while to appreciate the role..of course she won't as it is "beneath her"

MrsFruitcake - I feel your pain..get the same as a dental receptionist..when I tell people that I am sorry there are no appointments for 3 weeks they crane over to try to see the screen to see all the lovely appointments I must be "hiding"

which of course I do as I love to be talked to like a piece of crap by uppity demanding people!

Thanks Fanjo - I forgot to bring that up in my post - it is possibly the hardest job I've ever had to do, certainly much more involved than being a typist.

My local GP practice is amazing - friendly, helpful receptionists, nurses and doctors. It's hard to get an appointment with my own doctor, but if I need to be seen the same day or the next, I've never had a problem and I don't have to explain my reasons for asking for an urgent appointment to the receptionists. I'm hopefully going to be moving to the next town along in a few months and am actually a bit stressed about having to find another GP's practice as my current one is so fab. I have experienced other practices though with receptionists that have seen it fit to try to prescribe home remedies over the phone rather than actually give me an appointment

In life I largely find you get back what you give if you have the attitude in your heart that people are cunts then that generally comes across in the way you interact with them and so it's no wonder that they aren't always that amenable back. Such a shame some posters don't display a more compassionate and dare I say it for some a more Christian attitude.

Hobnobs - the right attitude works both ways. The patients who are making the appointments -are in a one down position to start with. They're worried and feeling a bit vulnerable - there's no need to be cold or unkind with them.

IME it's very rare for a practice nurse to understand the point Animation just made. When you are ill, you are vulnerable, and you may not be able to be as articulate as you are in normal life. When you are in a lot of pain, that is even more the case. When you are old and in pain, it's very hard to be as craven as practice nurses seem to expect you to be.

Higgle is absolutely right that most of the posts on here by nurses have completely proved her point.