GP really arsey

[sukysue]

Well aibu? took dd1 to gp for emergency appt to get antibiotics for cellulitis on her leg following insect bites . She is away at uni and is registered there now not at the home surgery but of course she is home now.Anyway she had to register as a temporary patient to see the gp today. When we went in she gave dd the antibiotics straight away within about 1 minites consultation it was 5 o'clock and we were the last patient waiting. She was on emergency surgery till 6.30. So while we were there I said to her oh dr could you please prescribe my dd some duac for her acne. She went on about how it was an emergency appt and that it wasn't really the time and place to ask for that,she then went on to say I have been here for 3 hours in surgery and I have had a terrible day . By the time she had finished moaning and being arsey if she had just given her the bloody duac we would have been gone already I explained that we wouldn't be going back any time soon as she was in uni and this was to prevent a waste of ours and their time getting an appt just for the duac,honestly we never go to the gp . I was very nice to her thanked her very much and creep arsed around her but it has really upset me to be honest it was such a little thing to ask of her there was no need for her to treat us like that. I just feel really deflated at her attitude. I wish I could do just a four and a half hour shift.

It's very simple, if you want to discuss more than one problem you book a double appointment. This is nothing new, gp surgeries have always advised people to do this.

This was an emergency appointment and was for a non registered patient. Emergency appointments are for the emergency problem only.

The ultimate aim will be that health electronic record systems will be accessible by every nhs health provider. Currently however, it is generally only your specific gp that can access your gp records, some areas have limited sharing locally but this is hit and miss, partly because at the beginning different gps/ hospitals/ community trusts bought different computer systems.

Ged81 you do not pay her wages. The NHS pays her wages. As she pays tax too are we to say she is self employed??

softlysoftly ????

Surely it's obvious that it isnt't 'one appointment, one symptom' but rather one health issue per appointment. So it would be fine to go to gp and say you have, eg sickness, dizziness, rash and expect them to try and diagnose and prescribe treatment. It would not be reasonable after that to say, 'oh and whilst I'm here can I get another prescription for my anti-depressants' for example, as that would require a whole new consultation.

Some GPs are rude, yes. In the same way some teachers are rude, some cashiers are rude etc. If you dont rate a doctor, ask to see a different GP when you book.

And softlysiftly - not sure why the ethnicity of the gp is of any relevance unless of course you are a racist bigot

The GP system in the UK is the WORST thing about the NHS. They're a bunch of officious jobsworth gate-keepers who have been dragged kicking, screaming and protesting to the stage they are at now by various govts who have had to FORCE them to offer reasonable opening hours etc. The UK system of having to register with a single surgey etc is rubbish and does not work at all well in the case of Uni students etc. GP's have however done an AMAZING job of peddling a crap service and getting the public to adhere to it /promote it as evidenced by all the "it's the system so follow it" comments on here.

It's a second class crap system and they get away with it because 90pc of Brits can't bear to have anything about the NHS criticised.

YANBU OP!

SarahBum...

Out of genuine curiosity, in what country or countries have you experienced a superior GP system and how did it differ from the UK system.

I agree that the case of the Uni students is troublesome. My kids did Oxford terms, so they were at home more weeks than they were at Uni; just didn't make sense.

YABU

Say everyone booked one appointment and went in and had 2 or 6 different things that they wanted to consider???

Australia. Chose which doc you see. See medicare doc and pay nothing or chose a more expensive doc and pay the difference between their cost and medicare. Nothing like the issues getting an appt in the uk and AND discuss as many problems as you want. If they gave you the attitude that UK GP's do you just would not go back to that Doc and their earnings would plummet.

Also my daughter is currently in hospital in Italy. Here with children you just take them direct to children's hospital no GP nonsense and then specialists are right there when you need them. Again - no "one issue" crap.

madame well that's we do and it's not a problem.

Yabu.

You got an emergency appt, she dealt with that problem.

The gp could have done with the 'no is a complete sentence' advice though. There was no need for her to go on about how tired she was, she should have just told you 'no'.

I know no one on this thread is going to change their mind, but for any GPs reading, I just wanted to say that generally I have found GPs great. They work massively hard and I've always had good service. I have utmost respect for the role.

I agree that there needs to be a system to assist people like uni students and others who split the year between two locations. Maybe that will be easier to achieve with electronic records easily accessible in the future.

Ha no sorry dashed that off half asleep them failed to return, am married to a Bengali!

The reason I ask is my mild mannered gp DSIL puts up with all manner of bollocks all year long and works ridiculously long hours.

It is however now Ramadan on the hottest longest time of the year. With no food or water her bullshit tolerance has fallen through the floor wondered if you had met her

In all seriousness YANBU to not expect her to be grumpy but your statement of "a 4hr shift" and you adding stuff rather than your adult daughter hints that you may have been a little pushy.

Fionas - it's amazing how the rest of the world copes with what Britain deems "impossible" and has better standards (education/healthcare/life expectancy).

Having worked for a while in Australia, I experienced consultant paediatricians ordering quite unnecessary tests for their private patients because they got paid extra for them. Never mind the extra radiation to the children or whether it was clinically indicated.
Also speaking to friends who work their currently, the system is easier for doctors because they can bill for the problems the patient comes on with. GP funding in the uk is very very different. If the public want an improved system in the uk, primary care needs more funding. We can not deliver more and more services over increasing hours with no investment.
Most GPs care alot about the care they provide and the majority of patients with genuine needs have those needs met, but there is room for improvement of course. I cannot do anymore than I already do in my 'part time hours' that being 32hrs over 2.5 days.

Not a GP but I do work in NHS with booked appointment slots. I sometimes have Emergency patients booked in that I know nothing about apart from their name and address.

So they come in, and I need to do a history.
Check circulation and sensation (most of our patients are diabetic)
Treat the emergency.
Arrange antibiotics if needed
Arrange another appointment

In 20 minutes.

Sometimes we have emergencies turning up late if they have to go to another clinic site and don't allow enough time to find out where they are going.
And once they are through the door they think time stops and they have unlimited time.

Oh and don't get me started on the ones who turn up for a routine appointment and want an insole made.
Or Nail Surgery and want their other nails cut too.

So sukysue I guess your GP could have WORDED it better but YABU.

1. One visit, one problem is sensible. If you fill 20 minutes talking to your doctor about the 7 health issues you've left until now to talk about, they are not going to be able to evaluate your problems to the best of their abilities. (You don't get this problem in the US as time doesn't tend to be rationed there, but there, if you hit them with all of that during your visit, they will just charge you more. Charges for primary care office visits are partly based on how complex the doctor judges your health issues to be).

2. An emergency doctor is not your regular doctor and is not well-informed about your, or your relatives', day-to-day health issues. You go to see emergency doctors because of specific problems, not because of ongoing chronic conditions (unless there is a flare-up). So if you demand your regular acne medication, the emergency doctor, not knowing the history of that particular complaint, doesn't know whether that demand is justified or not. Your GP would give it to you without a second thought.

3. Doctors don't appreciate being told what to prescribe! I went to the doctor this week to try to get some fluconazole for what I thought was a fungal infection I'd picked up after a course of antibiotics. It turned out that I didn't have a fungal infection at all. I got it wrong. And, although I'm not a doctor, I've got a fair chunk of medical experience.

aaarrrggghhh to the posters who cannot grasp that obviously a doctor can only deal with one problem in one booked appt. Otherwise how on earth could one time manage.
I'm sure these posters would be first to complain if they kept waiting whilst the patient in front of them kept saying 'and another thing...'

It's not GPs fault, but what this thread highlights is that the NHS provides a crap service, from a patient perspective. Anyone who has experience of living abroad is used to much better.

By some Stalinist measure of overall efficiency, the NHS may well be better. From a patients perspective, you are just raw-material for a machine that has no respect for you, your needs or your time.

In another similar thread I think it was claimed that GPs only earn £10 for each extra appointment. In a similar thread on a different forum someone commented in passing that patients should pay a "token" £20-£30 per appointment, in order to discourage time-wasters. (I suppose that like me they were assuming a GP appointment could and should cost £50-£100 in total, with the level of service one would expect at that cost.) If what many (I accept not all) people regard as a "token" amount is two or three times what GPs actually get, it explains why we have a system that has no chance of satisfying many of its customers. It wouldn't be hard to devise a system where half of all appointments were free, and half paid for, with the paid-for ones being sold as being at more convenient times for working people. The revenue raised could be enough to eventually double the number of available GP appointment-minutes.

sarah I know. Amazingly awful system yet they just accept it.

Lol to the none UK posters saying our system is crap. I think it's absolutely brilliant. The only people who don't are the very entitled types who are never happy.

However busy they are GP's should still be professional and not arsey/rude to patients. They're only human though after all...

Yanbu. It doesn't matter how crap the GPs day has been. She is offering a service (which you have paid for) and she earns a wage. What kind of organisation would approve of its service provider having a rant at the customer. A simple I'm afraid I can't do that, you'll need to book a normal appointment would have been fine.
I have experienced great and very poor service at the same surgery. One of the Drs had a right go at me once for coming into the surgery to book an emergency appointment for my dd instead of calling first. I had just picked her up from nursery which was on the next street and thought driving home to ring in would mean we ended up in A&E given the late hour. I was prepared to wait but the GP thought this was unreasonable and not following procedure. I felt like a kid being told off, but was extremely apologetic and polite despite thinking, what an arse, because I was in a position where he was responsible for my baby's health.

Londonman GPs don't earn anything extra per appointment. A GP surgery has Partners who take drawings from the business rather than a salary. GP pracices are paid various amounts by the government, but the basic sum is about £70 per patient per year. This is is the same, however many appointments the patient needs, which I think is excellent value. It also means it's of no advantage to the GP to only see one problem per appointment except that it means the problems can be treated safely and correctly and the other patients or jobs aren't kept waiting.

GP surgeries are also paid extra for things like flu jabs and for reaching targets in monitoring and treating chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease.

How many of the posters who think overseas systems are better have experienced being dirt poor in those countries?

For me, I will take the problems of the NHS over worrying that I don't have insurance or can't afford the GP.

Oh, or we could have much, much, much higher taxes.

'Maybe that will be easier to achieve with electronic records easily accessible in the future.'

The new electronic record-storing seems to have been a total waste of time, with doctors unsure of how to access blood test results, etc.

We had to wait three weeks for results we knew had been posted on the computer (knew it because the lady who did the sweat test at the hospital told me when she'd done it) to be made known to us because the consultant didn't know how to call them up. Three weeks--waiting to hear whether our son had CF: a very serious disease. In the end, my husband had to ask our GP surgery to fax (!) the results they seemed able to pull up to the consultant, who was just gazing at his screen in our appointment, saying, 'I just can't see them anywhere'.

In a similar vein, I have been waiting four weeks now to learn whether the biopsy taken in my colonoscopy is anything to worry about. This, in a family with so much colon cancer I had genetic counselling. I know my biopsy results have been interpreted by someone in the system but my GP doesn't seem able to find that person.

Where possible I now ask for anything that might be of any interest to anyone to be printed off and given to me so that I can take it from appointment to appointment myself.

I have a chronic condition and so unfortunately see a lot of GP surgerys. I've also lived and experienced the healthcare systems in a number of different countries and really have no complaints about the NHS in comparison.

But back to the OP, YABU - an emergency appointment is just that, to deal with an urgent problem. It's not to deal with routine issues being cared for by another surgery or regular medication which should have been arranged in advance. It's really not a quick task for a GP seeing a temporary resident, they're very unlikely to have access to records unless you're under the same practice and so can't (responsibly) just prescribe what you ask for without a full consultation.

Not really suitable for an emergency appointment but I can see how your daughter found herself in this position. in the UK, travelling away from home and needing to see a doctor seems to cause great problems. In these days, patients notes should be easily accesible electronically, what does it matter where the patient lives in the UK?

On the same subject, what is the point in changing your go hen you move a few miles? Why do these rules exist? If you are working away from home or on holiday for two weeks, its completely impractical to register as a temporary resident wherever you go.

It would probably be simpler to fly to France and pay a small fee to see a documents or there.