to think that this GP should be struck off

[atheistmantis]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-39095656

A five-year-old girl died of an asthma attack after being turned away by a GP because she arrived minutes late for her appointment.

CaraAspen

Haven't read the whole thread but I did read elsewhere that the "enquiry" seemed to be done and dusted pretty quickly.
Of course, GPs should allow a few minutes grace, especially in the case of anyone with a chronic condition - and particularly if that anyone is a child. After all, we often have to wait for OUR appointments with THEM.

Shame on her and on any other person who deals with what are potentially life and death situations, if they do not do their very best to put the patent's needs first.

...patient's...

I hope there can be an appeal.

GP should have seen the child and sounds uncaring. Similar happened to me once - turned up at GP having had an accident outside the door, they made me wait over an hour until they'd seen all the booked apts. They could have quickly seen me and called an ambulance which is what they eventually did anyway (wasn't in a fit state to do it myself)

In the vets we would always see emergencies first. Other clients are always happy to wait if you explain what's happening, in my experience.

On the other hand, it's not the GP's fault the child died, she might have died anyway. Also it was 5 hours later so there was time for the child to be taken elsewhere. So the punishment probably is proportionate. Particularly if you imagine that if they saw everyone who is late they would be there late every night - most people who are late then don't die the same evening. Bad judgement but not cause of death.

GP should have seen her and sent her to A&E. I work in another area of medicine and that's where a large majority of our referrals come from. Especially as she wasn't actually seeing patients! And child was know to have brittle asthma. All it would have taken was stethoscope to the chest and a call to A&E which was obviously needed. I am no Respiratory Medicine expert but even I know these basics.

If she believed that turning away the client was right, she would have stood by that decision

Not necessarily ... a GP with her reported attitude may well still believe she was right, but have lied to those she saw as "lesser", knowing their disagreement would cause unpleasantness for herself

For me, this is the point about the "retraining" smokescreen which gets wafted around at such times: it can no doubt fill holes in knowledge, improve clinical skills and so on, but I doubt it can really do much about attitudes

Yes this is awful, yes the gp shouldn't have turned away the child. It's not the child's fault their parent couldn't get them there on time.

But, gps are under so much stress with ten minute appointments. My dh is never home before 8pm and doesn't see our baby during the week. People go to the gp demanding all sorts of things that aren't medical (letters writing for their landlords is one example), for ridiculous reasons that should be dealt with at home, and turn up for 10 minute appointments with a list of problems thinking they're doing the gp a favour (one appointment per problem please).

A petition to solve the problem - longer gp appointments, more reasonable targets, more funding would be a much better idea.

She turned a very sick child away when she had no patients in. She knew about her history.

At our surgery they don't turn children away. They will always try and fit them in, even if you haven't told them that it's an emergency.

Turning someone away from an emergency appointment is unforgivable.

WarblingWail

Yes this is awful, yes the gp shouldn't have turned away the child. It's not the child's fault their parent couldn't get them there on time.

Do you really think you have dealt satisfactorily with this appalling situation by writing the above in your opening paragraph, before continuing to make excuses in the rest of your post?

I have never seen or heard a GP send an emergency appointment patient away in this manner.
This person , if the facts are true , is completely unsuitable to be a doctor. it sounds like the culture of the whole practice was of fear ,leading to no one questioning her behaviour .
She has brought the profession into disrepute and tarred GPs with her terrible behaviour .
Hopefully the GMC will look at this again to deter people with these personality flaws from entering the profession .
Thoughts go to the poor family .

I am sure there is plenty that we are not being told, but the fact that the GMC did act, even if only with the paid suspension and the warning, does suggest that there is truth in this, whether or not the media have reported the entire story.

The mum did call the GP surgery and was given an urgent appointment, but it left her little time to organise care of her other child and then actually get to the surgery so she informed the receptionist that they were up against it a bit but would be there? That is how I read it, rightly or not.

If that is correct then the GP should have seen her, no question about that. These things happen, and it was an emergency. This was clearly one of those cases where other less urgent appointments have to wait while the urgent case is given priority. It looks as thought this particular doctor may have tackled this case the other way round though, and surely that would always be risky when the patient is known to have bad asthma, or any other potentially life-threatening medical condition.

We have no detail though of what happened in the intervening time when they were turned away from the surgery and when the ambulance was called at 10.30pm. There are gaps in the reporting.

Poor family though. Thoughts are with them.

So glad our GP surgery doesn't have an appalling culture like this one.

At our GP they will always see a child on the same day if needed. And if you're late, they will still see you. Even if it's the last appointment on the day, they will wait for an emergency appt.

For example, I got an emergency appointment for 4yo DS, who had a very high temp and a stiff neck. Emergency appt was in 20 mins time. I don't have a car & had another DC who had to be collected from school at the same time (so similar issues to this girl's mother in having to make arrangements). I got there 15 mins late. The GP was waiting for us, was wonderful & sympathetic, and after examining DS sent us straight to hospital where DS remained for 4 days, having IV antibiotics. If they'd told us to come back the next morning, then the bacterial infection (not meningitis) would have got much worse during the night and who knows what might have happened. Perhaps I would have gone on to A&E myself, but I think it's equally likely I'd have done as told and gone home intending to return.

one appointment per problem please

That is ridiculous. Apparently totally unrelated symptoms can all be part of a systemic problem. If there is a long list of problems, then perhaps one should ask for a double appointment to give time to go over them all. My DC had a whole range of symptoms that seemed utterly unrelated. Approaching them in a piecemeal way wasted a lot of time before a brilliant paediatrician sat down and looked at all the issues and came up with the answer - an autoimmune disease that was causing all the separate issues. If no-one had done that, my DC would be in a terrible state by now. Possibly dead.

People are not cars, with discrete parts to be fixed & replaced. (Actually, even cars are engineered in a pretty holistic way these days).

There is unfortunately an arrogance in a small minority of health care workers. Last year I had a 111 call handler decide that i was an over anxious mother and my request half way through our call for an ambulance because I could see my son was becoming seriously unwell was brushed away. Told I would have to wait at least two hours for an ambulance. My husband and I took him in our car to a and e. I had to resuscitate him twice on the way there and he wasn't breathing as we pulled in front of a and e. He had bacterial meningitis and was on life support for 6 days.
The 111 caller was sent for retraining!!!!

I'm not making excuses. She shouldn't have turned away the child. She was wrong to do so.

The GMC won't and shouldn't change their minds as to someone's fitness to practice based on mob mentality. They wouldn't be much of a professional body if they allowed an angry mob of non-medically trained people to overrule.

I think we should look at the cause of over stretched doctors and try to fix that - that is something people should be getting angry about and trying to fix. Where's all that brexit money that was going to the NHS, eh? That could extend the 10minutes appointments.

As for one problem per appointment, I obviously mean don't go in there with your dodgy knee, mention a funny looking mole halfway through and then comment on the fact you've been having pains in your chest on the way out. Obviously, if you have a collection of symptoms with no obvious cause you mention the lot.

It's like some people want to deliberately misunderstand.