To be surprised by how difficult it is to get (non-urgent) medical attention?

[VelvetSpoon]

I phoned my GP surgery today to make an appointment.

I am not ill, it is not life threatening. However, it is something that ideally I would prefer to arrange sooner rather than later.

The next available appointment is on 10 June.

The surgery used to operate open appointments on certain mornings (between 8.30-9.30 I think) where you could turn up and wait to be seen. This has now been replaced by an arrangement where you call in on the morning, and there are 10 appointments available (so if you're caller 11, hard luck). However, the next one of those is not til next Tues and of course absolutely no guarantee I'll even get seen then.

I asked if there were any other options - yes, apparently I can attend a local clinic. Great, I thought. Except it then transpires the local clinics only see the under 25s

I was left feeling distinctly unimpressed, and still no closer to actually seeing a Dr! Oh, and to add insult to injury, the only appt they had on the 10th is at 1pm, too early to get to if I take an afternoon off, and too late to get to work in time if I have the morning off. Surely I should not have to take an entire day off for a (pretty routine) Dr's appointment, and have to wait 2 bloody weeks for it?!!

I do think some of it is down to management.

Dp rang yesterday.He got a doctor's phonecall,then a doctor's appointment and a prescription all within 2 hours.He was asked if it was an emergency by the rec and he said "define emergency".It was to him(and it was quite serious) so he did the right thing.

That question annoys us but when my dd has cystitis I'm afraid I say yes as days later for an appointment is too late,ditto things like eye infections for the dc.I often say I don't need an appointment urgently.Dp needed bloods done and advice from a doc a while ago and said he could wait then.I think a bit of give and take is needed.

Our surgery is steadily getting better.That said it's a bunfight to see my amazing gp who everybody else thinks is amazing so we do have to take other gps if we want to be seen really soon.The "is it an emergency" thing though can have it's faults,my pil would say no if his leg was hanging off.

I do wonder if working people should have a priority for out of working hours appointments.I also wonder if they could keep tabs on time wasting but I except it's not easy to do.

We have 'worker only appointments' from 7-8 am and from 4:30-5:30pm.

I think for me what's trickiest is not having medical training myself, I'm not necessarily confident at what is/isn't an emergency outside of the obvious. This is made more difficult as I have 3 chronic conditions and am 34 weeks pg at the mo.

For instance I called up GPs about itching on hands and feet 2 weeks ago and receptionist told me it wasn't an emergency so I had an appt for today. At my obstetrician appt yesterday, doc flipped when I mentioned it and I spent the day being monitored and it seems that I have choleostasis (sp)

I also fell foul of relying on a pharmacist for a chesty cough as I didn't want to waste GPs time and ended up in hospital for a week with pneumonia which damaged my lungs so I now have asthma.

Cold why didn't you ring your obstetrician or midwife first ? GP are seen as being easy and cheap to access and as such are drowning in demand.
I fail to see how anyone medical or otherwise could think fungal nails is an urgent need.....

Took my daughter repeatedly for stomach pains, made to feel like I was wasting time. Every Time. Managed to get a referral to hospital for blood tests, ( at the reluctance of the unsympathetic GP) came back as Coeliac disease. I now have very little faith in my local GPs.

Going back to tax, tax doesnt pay the NHS, NI does and I'm sure that wasn't 30k a year.

Maybe surgeries need to print a list of things for patients that would be classified as an emergency,can wait a day or 2 or can wait a week or more.

I have to admit re managing/getting appointments for the 5 of us it's not always crystal clear what you should say.Ie I had no idea that cystitis in little girls needs to be dealt with soon(our Gp takes wee samples,gives an appointment and an initial prescription on the same day). With me if I had it I'd wait but my doc said last time when I commented on how thorough he was with dd said they take it more seriously with little girls.

A list would be good to have by the phone as I hate having to give medical details to a rec in a public area who then attempts to make the choice.Are doc receptionists trained in medical matters out of interest?

Thank you twit I knew someone who eventually come on with their personal anecdote as a generalisation to rubbish all GPs, that was what I was trying to say earlier. I now await the usual suspects.

Ours do a lot of doc phone calls which seems to work well,I guess they must save time.

Nhs choices website has just such a thing. Most people can access the internet. Most surgeries web site will have such lists as well. Have you ever looked.

I wasn't, sorry I don't post often. Just feel very sad for my daughters situation. I am sorry if I offended you

I have been doing some work with GP's recently & imo people do see their GP's for the wrong things. Coughs & colds feature a lot. Surely unless there's an underlying health condition such as asthma you don't need to see the doctor for a cold. People perhaps need educating on when to go to the doctor (actually that was the point of NHS direct wasn't it - but people thought it was a replacement for doctors - add in their computer sending everyone to see a doctor & it led to increased doctor contact time rather than less). But anyway all the coughs colds & sickness bugs cluttering up the waiting room make it hard to be seen when you really need someone. The OP situation is ridiculous

Having said that I haven't ever had a problem getting an appointment (last time I rang at 4pm for ds1 was seen at 5.20pm) so the NHS primary care is still functioning in some places.

Not in my experience retro, I see approx 20 patients in a morning (some prebooked some urgent) then up to 15 call backs, then house calls. Just more work we squeeze into a never ending day. The government think we need to add email and Skype into our chocka block days as well. Sure at 10 pm when my kids are in bed, after I've finished work on my diploma and appraisal work. No prob. I'll do it for free too if you like. Or actually a 10% cut.

No, we don't get any training, get paid not much more than nmw and get moaned at all day long. I do get a discount in nandos though.

Macdoodle, I'm not midwife led so don't have anyone to contact and didn't know it could be urgent so thought GP was sensible option, I didn't want to waste anyone's time at Maternity emergency as there's much sicker people out there than me and I thought it was just itchiness

Twit thank you I hope you Dd is ok. I am just sensitive that threads like this were actually constructive debate is happening, usually degenerate into the usual suspects ranting about their personal problems as a marker of how rubbish and stupid and uncaring all GP are. It's soul destroying. Sorry for snapping.

No because generally when trying to get an appointment you have to be on the phone by 8.30 and sit there just to get through.Googling during getting people off to work and school isn't always possible.

Also surely surgeries must vary.We are in an area with a lot of elderly patients.Surgeries surely have there own way of running things.Ours doesn't have working patient appointments for a start.I'd like more info.Dp only found out yesterday by chance that they've stopped the drop in emergency appointments.

If we had a list of the various types of appointments and the various people qualified,symptoms for appointments etc I'm sure it would help.There is very little on our surgery' website.

For example I worked GP OOH last night. Just before midnight we took 2 calls. One a child who had literally worken up that minute with a high temp, no other concerns, no calpol given, just rang? The other an adult woman with earache, she had rung an hour earlier 20 mins after it started, no other problems, she was adviced to take some painkillers, she rung back half an hour later because it hadn't gone, no other sx, she insisted on being seen. Just a snapshot. Very common scenarios.

Does it flash up on screen how often you see the doc?

I've known dp for 25 years and yesterday was only the second time he'd ever asked for a gp appointment.

I did wonder if they must have thought "bloody hell he must be ill" before dishing out the gold plated treatment yesterday.We were impressed I have to say.Diagnosed and treated in 2 hours by his own surgery.

Mac so why don't they give out warnings when that has happened say 3 times?

That has been my experience of working with GP's macdoodle. And that sort of thing seemed to take up 80% of the time.

Ours doesn't open booking for the next month until the last week of the previous. So you couldn't book anything for June until Tuesday of this week. Getting through on the first open day of booking is almost impossible, so when you do eventually get through everything has gone. End up in A&E for something and told to see the GP once a week for a month afterwards for monitoring? Tough luck, unless you get ill just before booking period opens and you get through on the phone- then it's fine.

Ha Retro - when I went for a carer's check recently my GP said 'who are you? I don't know you I never see you'

I used to read a paramedics blog. He said that if you got a call saying someone was gasping for breath and going blue, 9 out of 10 times you would arrive, and the "patient" would be wandering around chatting to their relatives. But then you would get calls for somone with slight chest pain, and turn up to find someone gasping for breath who had just had heart surgery 2 weeks before.

Some people always exagerate their symptoms. Others like a relative of mine, always underplay them. My relative who is in her 40's could be on the point of collapse, but would say she is feeling a bit unwell.