To wonder how many times GPs get it wrong, and risk someones life? for the sake of funds??

[lisad123]

Had a call from friend earlier today to say another friend of ours has a tumor on her spine. GP has fobbed her off for ages :(
Same happened with dh, and my gp misdiagonised gallstones and sadly i ended up very unwell.
DD2 we were told had a virus but instead she had pnemonia, and so spent a week in hospital.

Cancer seems to be the thing they miss most often, especially if you dont fit target age ect.
I always feel GPs dont refer or do tests because of funding and people are dying, getting very unwell because of it.

I think sometimes patients forget that GPs are human too. Most will be trying to do the very best they can for their patients. Of course there are some bad GPs, I've had some myself, and these need to be weeded out.

Everyone gets things wrong occasionally. Imagine having a job where making a mistake could be the difference between life and death. It doesn't make for a stress free job, especially alongside the long hours, funding cuts, endless paperwork and need to "demonstrate competence" by doing tedious reflective writing. Pressure is increasing on GPs as more work is pushed from hospitals into Primary Care and expectations of patients increase, without any increase in funding.

I'm a GP and if I make a mistake that affects a patient it affects me. I feel happy when my patients are happy and I share their sadness when bad things happen. Some of the stories outlined on this thread sound like horrible situations. I suspect that in many of the cases where serious diagnoses were missed the GPs involved felt absolutely awful about it.

Is there then no urge to apologise to the patient, or to their bereaved next-of-kin, NightFallsFast?

Wouldn't that assuage the guilt a little?

I have apologised many times to patients - both for my own mistakes and for those of others. I can't speak for other people. It doesn't make me feel any better about making the mistake, but however hard I find it to talk to a patient or their family about a mistake it often enables me to deal with my own feelings about the situation. It's also one of the best ways to help reflect on why a mistake happened and how it can be prevented in the future, and that's helpful for the patient/their family, the GP and the GP's future patients.

The flip side is that if we carried the burden of every death or unwell patient or mistake with us all the time, we'd burn out very quickly. We have to learn how to live with uncertainty (as one of the other posters said) and how to switch off when we go home. Many GPs are thoroughly burnt out by 50, and I can understand why.

Nightfalls don't bother these threads are all the same. I've been here long enough not to waste my breathe.

I have 'shrug it off' GP's in the past.

My current GP'S is fantastic as is the practice, our practice has a PA for every 2 doctors and you call that number so less waiting and she can make a GP or nurse practitioner or nurse appt and also take a question to the doctor to then either call you back or have the GP call you. We can also do repeat Rx online and have an attached Boots pharmacy.

Some do get it badly wrong but they are a minority, the country GP who over saw the care of both my parents whilst the were dying or cancer was fantastic and he took the time to get to know me as a care provider for them and was available by phone every lunchtime.

NightFallsFast, if more GPs had your approach, we wouldn't be in the situation we are currently in, in this country. It beggars belief that your approach is not mainstream.

I genuinely can't understand the desire to sweep all this under the carpet.

I know some very good doctors - not just as a patient but people I've worked with at various times. Sadly I also know some terrible ones - the guy with the private practice who was incompetent and then tried to sue a patient who complained about him and refused to pay for the last consultation is particularly noteworthy.

Thing is, some doctors are very clubby. Sometimes even OK ones will gang up against a 'difficult' patient who dares to speak out of turn. Or a 'difficult' colleague who says hang on, this isn't right. (Steve Bolsin had to leave the country after exposing the Bristol paediatric heart surgery scandal, a diabetologist of my acquaintance was hounded out of her job, same happened to doctors who tried to blow the whistle on mid-Staffs, the doctor who warned the clinic where she worked was so badly run it was ruddy dangerous was suspended - weeks before Baby Peter Connolly was misdiagnosed there and sent home with a broken back.)

The medical profession, the NHS and private practice alike, have a terrible habit of covering up mistakes, of attacking anyone, professional or patient, who dares to object. There are good doctors doing their very best but there is a system that is deeply flawed and that will not support them if they point out where it is going wrong.

Exactly.

And the irony is: this is not just crappy public service at its worst.

It has a direct effect on the life, suffering and death of children, adults and elderly people.

As documented on this thread.

I have name changed for this as I always do when I am writing about my job.

I am a GP partner and Trainer - I train medical students, junior doctors and doctors training to be GPs. I also deal with complaints that come into the practice.

I can totally understand the distress that is caused when things go wrong and even the best doctor in the world is unlikely to be free of making some mistakes. But I think a lot of the distress ( and subsequent complaints) come from the attitude and consultaton skills of the doctors involved. I spend many hours trying to teach some of these skills and it's still a continual learning curve for me.

Being a reasonable GP is an incredibly difficult job which requires you to keep up to date, justify every decision, have a deep psychological connection with humans and above all be emotionally resilient. That's a big ask in one person.

As for pay - I am am currently being paid exactly the same as my salaried GPs ( who do not have any management committments or risk) and about 10% more than my trainee. Hardly a fat cat but I am passionate about what I do and treat it as my life's vocation.

Don't have time to read it all but this thread is massively biased from what i've read.

If you start of a thread complaining about GP's on a website like this, particularly on the uber bitchy AIBU forum, untold people will come forward with horror stories. People are also more willing to complain then they are praise.

I admit there are bad GP's but equally there are very good ones. I've been with my GP for 10 years. At least 3 times over the years I've been to her with something innocuous that I felt stupid about making a fuss for and she's referred me for tests, MRi's or to a specialist and they've actually found conditions that were in need of treatment. I trust my GP with my life.

I couldn't be a GP. Lets not forget how badly some people speak to them and treat them and the fact that they get so many arseholes going in with a sore throat or a cold and expecting the GP to do something about it.....! So many people who don't turn up to appointments.

Also I work in a clinical negligence department as a soliciotr and part of the job is new enquiries. I once had a very irate parent a few years ago calling me wanting me to make a clin neg claim regarding his 8 year old son. She took her son to the GP with nothing more than a sore throat and the GP recommended calpol and told her to buy it. She was furious the GP wouldn't prescribe it free hence her phone call to me to make a claim for the GP's negligence . I told her that at 8 her son was old enough to swallow pilles if you cut them off and paracetamol tablets can be bought for 16p. She hung up on me.

How GP's deal with this I don't know.

I have had mixed experiences but definitly more good than bad. I am on dc2, and despite the odd complication I have been so impressed with the care I've had.

People are human. Even a top consultant missed my mother's cancer.

A friend's husband had many trips to the GP over 6 months with a back ache that wouldn't go away with "Just take a couple of paracetamol". He was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer - too advanced to operate, secondaries were already in his liver by then. he died a few months later. He was in his early fifties.

Im shocked to read some of your stories, so sad and in many cases inexcusable.

Im very lucky with my gp's we have about 10 doctors and loads of nurses, nurse practitioners, hca's, womans health specialists etc. ther only time I didnt get a same day appt is when I called at 3pm (understandable)
I often see the nurse practitioner, they are amazing.
My own gp ran a load of tests and ordered scans in june/july I'm now recovering from a gallbladder removal, v fast work by my trust.

I know I'm one of ther lucky ones but everyone in my gp's receptionists included are amazing.

How many people are willing to come on a thread like this and say.

"I took my DD to the GP convinced she had cancer. The GP listened to everything I said and did all the tests. All she actually had was a cold."

I know a few people have but I would have thought the ratio of doctor being wrong to patient being wrong is not as high as it would appear from this thread.

well I kind of did say something like that but without being so specific, marcopront - I had paranoid fear that DS had something seriously wrong with him, causing his breathing issues (turns out he hyperventilates like I do); and I have paranoia on my own behalf because I have Factor V Leiden thrombophilia and breathing issues could mean a pulmonary embolism - but no, it was just me hyperventilating again.

i couldnt, i dont take mine to the GP for cold

True lisa - nothing I've ever gone for has turned out to be "just a cold" .

Thumbwitch I know you did, I said a few people had. I can fully understand why you would have that fear - I don't think you are being paranoid.

Lisad I am not saying about people who take their child knowing the child has a cold.

I am talking about the reverse case of most of the stories in this thread, where the doctor diagnoses correctly that nothing is wrong but the patient has been convinced the child is ill. People don't tell those stories.

I have taken my daughter to A and E once and been told nothing was wrong only for the doctor to diagnose and ear infection the next day. But far more times I have taken her to the doctor thinking something was wrong only to be told correctly she was OK. I don't think I am unique in that situation.

I suspect for the majority of the population the doctor does diagnose correctly but we don't tell those stories.

Oh, I've just had a vague memory - I'm sure there was a thread on here about it - someone finding something on their foot that they thought was a melanoma, or something really bad and it turned out to be something stuck to their foot, can't remember what - anyone else remember that?

I know what you mean marcopront - but I think it's a bit like saying "I'm happily married to DH and he never does anything to piss me off" - a non-story, mostly. So people don't tell those either because of the sheer banality of the story; or it could be because they're too embarrassed to admit that they were over-reacting a touch.
Mind you, my sis was told she was being neurotic - they got that wrong as well. :(

I know what you mean though, some people waste GP time with silly reasons but that's still no reason to get it so wrong.

In fact I met a lovely GP this morning who is new and clearly still under watchful eye of another GP. But he say, he listened, he examined me, went to talk to other GP, and has sent me for blood tests. Not all GP are bad but the mistakes of some cost lives

I agree Lisad some people however have extrapolated from one GP being bad to them all being bad.
At the risk of it scoring in mumsnet bingo - the plural of anecdote is not data.