To think my GP practice should take blood samples.

[RaisingthedeadArizona]

Was informed today that patients (apart from the elderly and chronically sick) are now to get blood taken at walk-in clinics at either of the two main city hospitals.

Both hospitals involve £3.90 bus fares to get to and as the journey is 35 mins each way, and the hospitals are both flipping massive, I suspect the whole exercise will take up to half a day.

My GP's practice is 2 mins away from home.

I'm not forever having blood tests and taking up loads of nurse appointments. Is it unreasonable to ask that I have this done at the doctors?

Our GP practice has a Phlebotomist but they come round once a week at mid-day.

I had to have a fasting blood test when I was pg with DS (who is now a teenager) and my GP said "You'd need to starve midnight -noon. Go t the hospital and have an early morning test"

Most diabetic patients want their fasting tests as early as possible so they can eat breakfast and get on with things.

Yadnbu.

This is quite a coincidence. I had a rather heated debate with the Practice Manager at our surgery about this recently. They do blood tests at ours, but not children.

I had to take dd out of school for a morning and traipse her over to the hospital for a 30 second test. She's very grown up and tall for her age (easily as tall as the nurse who took the test fgs). Everyone under 16 gets treated the same as a very young child (who may understandably require someone specially trained to take blood from small children) instead of assessing the situation sensibly. It's crazy.

Good for you writing to your MP. But I do feel that the surgery could be doing more and should be supporting their patients by making their own case to provide the service we need instead of saying oh well tough.