To be fucked off with the doctors situation

[StopFancyingPeople]

I’m so sick of the fight to get a doctors appointment. It never used to be so difficult and now it’s near on impossible.

I rang at 8am on Monday like you’re meant to. Automated message .... press 1 for appointments ... I press 1. I then get a long automated lecture about Coronovirus and then get told to press 1 again if I still want an appointment and have no symptoms of CV. I press 1. Automated message telling me the lines are very busy and press 1 for a call back. I press 1 and head off to work. They ring back at 9:30 when I’m upto my eyes in it at work and can’t answer the phone.

I try again Tuesday. Same kerfuffle with the automated messages. I request a call back and head off to work. Get a call back at 11am by which point there are no appointments left.

I try again yesterday. Same old shit. No appointments left by the time they ring me back. I lost my shit a little as I feel so Ill. I need to see a fucking doctor. It shouldn’t be this difficult!!! They sympathise and offer me an appointment ... for the end of March!!!!

I’m barely functioning. I’m incredibly fatigued, constant headache, nausea, anxious mess and not sleeping. Yesterday I could barely stay awake whilst driving home. Last night I went to bed do fucking tired that I woke up in a pool of my own piss. I didn’t even wake up for a wee. 2nd night in a row that I’ve wet the bed.

AIBU to call dr again today, make up some shit just to get an emergency same day appointment?! I don’t even feel that I should need to make shit up, I think I genuinely need to see a Dr today.

The annoying thing is, when you do by some miracle of god get to see a GP they then decide you need a blood test. Now god forbid the GP do this test there and then ... noooo .... you’ll have to make another appointment for a nurse to do it and good luck getting that within the next month or so.

It’s ridiculous. The system is fucking failing.

Also, as a nurse I see this from other people’s points of view too. A woman made up an excuse to come to my clinic last week. When she got there she asked me to diagnose something she had as she’d been trying to get a dr appointment for 3 weeks and has all the ducking symptoms of cancer. I could not help her, she needed to see a GP 3 weeks ago.

I didn’t go the GP for about 10 years. Then just for maternity appointments (so midwife). Needed a sick like for work (which I think is a huge part of the problem) and was told I was fine. I definitely wasn’t and had a rattley chest infection but gP was adamant no time of work needed. Next time I saw a dr I needed a sick line and went in ready to fight, I need signed off I wasn’t well. Bugger me but the dr took my temp and pulse and wrote a prescription and signed me off for 2 weeks. It was amazing, I almost fell in love with him. But alas word has spread that a gp is prepared to touch patients is there so now you can’t get an appointment with him and only the gp who won’t take your temp is available. I’m sure he’s qualified and definitely had years of experience but my whole family go there and have only ever heard “well you made it in here ok so you’ll be fine to carry on”
I genuinely don’t want HCP’s that work 12 hour days! Presumably there will be a tipping point where there aren’t enough drs and nurses for anything more than very emergency care. And then I guess we all go private.

I haven't read the whole thread. (Typical lazy doctor aren't I).

But I am a junior doctor currently choosing my future training field.

Reading the above, can you honestly say you expect people to chose GP training? I've only dipped my toe in whilst a student and junior doctor... and it looks horrendous. Truly. The relentlessness of stress, actually serious medical problems, rude patients with the 10 minute deadline... and even when you do eventually finish seeing them you've got more paperwork to do than is feasibly possible. And if you get it wrong, because believe it or not when you juggle a thousand plates you will drop them; At best a complaint? At worst Coroner's Court?

I honestly believe private healthcare is the only way forward because so many of my peers feel the same.

Excited0803 as I said they have to make a judgement based on the facts as they see them at the time. Sometimes they'll get things wrong but a certain amount of medicine is wait and see or try and see. They can't send everyone who has non-specific issues to a consultant.

And there must be a fair few people with your initial symptoms who do get better of their own accord. It sounds like you had a pretty clear idea that it was something that needed further investigation, which is what I was talking about, when using our judgement as an adult rather than reflexively booking an appointment for every minor symptom.

As I say if fewer people went with minor issues there would be more time for people who need more thorough investigations.

There was someone who went on embarrassing bodies to see the GP because they had been told they smelt of poo and couldn't understand why and thought it could be a medical issue. It turned out they weren't wiping their bottom properly. If we can't work that out ourselves, then there's a problem with how we view what medical services are designed to do compared with caring for ourselves.

I work in a GP practice and I wish I could print this thread out and give to patients! Anybody who wants a same day emergency appt we get in (literally the only person I think I’ve turned away was a bloke with a wart on his finger) routine are 1-2 weeks, nurse/hca appts are same/next day. And the abuse we get is unreal, people are just vile to us when they cannot get the exact time or GP that they want, we regularly get slated on the local Facebook pages.

Oh, and we have 4 phone lines at 8am so people usually only have to hold a few mins, but when you pick the phone up you always hear them ranting about being in a queue.

I'm sad to read that a junior doctor and his friends think that private healthcare is the only way forwards for the U.K.
I can hear his frustrations and how overloaded he is , but i just think it's awful we've come to this. Millions won't be able to afford it. It will cause all manner of problems and make the divide even bigger.
It's not perfect as it is now , but it's got to be better than only allowing the rich to become poorly and the poor can self medicate or just be left to rot. If junior doctors feel this way then there's not much hope left for the NHS!

Just use GP at Hand - I always get an appointment within the same hour, and often in the next 10 minutes.

@Greenandpleasanter - you are missing my point. These things happen and they try other stuff first blahblahblah. The point is that someone could look at stats or even some of the GP anecdotes and say "look at all these appointments that were unnecessary", but the appointments were very much needed. Equally anything for an under-12 month people are told to just go in, even if you think you've exercised judgement that it isn't needed and are just checking, you then have to go. There will be many other examples. No system is perfect, I'm just asking people to be a bit careful before they talk about unnecessary appointments, because they simply can't know the real stats.

Practice nurse here, due to retire in the next five years(as are three of my four colleagues), so there's another ticking time bomb.
Drop in clinics for bloods don't work. I used to run one. It started at 8am and by 7.30 there were twenty people queueing. Always overrun. Patients moaning about how long they'd had to wait. Nowhere to sit. Massively stressful.
Too many people in the system sadly. Too many people living too long.

I developed an angry rash last year on my neck, like a necklace almost. I thought it was just skin irritation and put Sudocrem on it but it soon started to actually hurt and burn and then it got like bubbles in it. So I went to the pharmacist to see if I could get a cream or paste stronger than Sudo and when she looked at it she told me it was shingles and I needed an emergency appointment, even with the nurse (I did not feel ill at the time, just the rash). I couldn't get anything so wound up with 111 and out-of-hours and then when I went for that and asked if I could wait in an area outside of the heaving waiting room because I was told I had shingles. Still had to wait for an hour for what was an appointment.

Too many people living too long
what are we to do about this though, refuse treatment past 85?

The French system seems to work well. Everyone has insurance, usually arranged by their bank. It is a co-pay system with the level of reimbursement based on income.
There is a free service for people on low income.
GP appointments are available same day and if you need a blood test/ scan/ physio assessment that is usually same day or up to 48 hours.
They are keen to refer you for daft stuff like homeopathy though.
Yes, there is a cost, but it does make people think carefully.
French pharmacists are very good IME.

No. But stop trying to 'cure' everything and have the difficult discussion about the value of prolonging life at all costs of some very old people with multiple co-morbidities and a questionable quality of life.

I'm going to be massively controversial but I know the GPs at my surgery well - they are really lovely, as are most of the reception staff . They are overwhelmed for two reasons. First the repeated building of one massive block of flats after another with no additional HCP provision - and that was a Ken Livingstone policy. The second is that there are thousands of people living in this area who come from a particular southern European country (near the top of the list above) who think that they should go to the GP with any small cough or bruise (and BTW if they don't get to see a GP or it happens at the weekend then they go en famille and pack out A&E). Some of them actually book a monthly appointment "just in case". It is no wonder our surgery is struggling - although they do run a daily afternoon emergency clinic on a drop in basis.

That is dreadful.
Yet what is the solution.

My surgery has a brilliant system.

You ring up (sometimes a wait to get through, especially between 8.30 and 9.30) and they give you an an appointment for a telephone consultation.

The doctor rings you, sometimes a bit late, but never unreasonably so, you have a chat and 90% of the time (ime) they work out what you need and send a prescription, electronically, to the pharmacy of your choice. The nearest pharmacy to my house usually has it made up within 20 minutes.

If you need to actually see a doctor, they can usually fit you in the same day or early the following morning. If it's really urgent they make you an appointment with the duty doctor, who might be at one of the other 2 surgeries in town or at your own, depending on the duty rota.

It works really well and I don't know why more surgeries don't do this.

Too many people in the system sadly

Or not enough doctors and nurses?

Go over to the thread about people paying for care homes! They are very good at keeping people alive in these places and along with modern medicine it's easy for folk to live a long time sometimes when they have no quality of life at all and probably wouldn't want to live like it.
It all adds to the pressure on our services.
The bills for euthanasia to made legal are always rejected. It's a fascinating subject and I'm surprised how many people agree something needs to change , but it won't.
It's off topic from the original op but it all adds to the pressure that our services are finding themselves under as living longer isn't always a very good thing in many cases and we are all seeing the problems and how it won't get much better over time. It's a bit bleak.
Our GPS are good though to be fair under a lot of strain as most places are.
My son has tried homeopathic medicine for a cough he had for six months and it worked! Maybe the French are more open to alternative things?

How strange that it didn't show up when you tested it yourself op! Sending off the sample is usual practice to ensure the right antibiotic is prescribed, so don't be alarmed. Though I expect you are aware of that.

I hope you feel better soon

Same with our GP practice it's Bedlam in there. Can't wait until the whole shebang is privatised to some extent. I will be more than happy to pay £40 to get a decent length appointment that is time convenient to me. I have just had surgery for breast cancer with some complex issues due to my other medication. I cannot get a GP appointment for a month. And my friend is admin at the practice and has confided they have hundreds of patients who book regular as clockwork appointments for very vague reasons that don't need a doctor's time. It's infuriating.

If people working in these GP practices can prove that people are making appointments they don't need and generally being time wasters etc then they should be fined! I know it would be difficult but if a patten appears over , say , six months or so and it's the same old folk messing about then they should be made aware of the consequences. I know people will say it's hard to police but if it puts people off it might be worth it? Or a letter to them from the practice explaining why they shouldn't keep going up there for non urgent things?
There's clearly a problem. Charging for appointments would help to weed out those who are not really in need but that is drastic measures too!
I haven't got the answers , but something should be done in these cases!

So basically, if you had answered the call back on Monday this whole thread would not have happened.
🤷🏼‍♀️

confided they have hundreds of patients who book regular as clockwork appointments for very vague reasons that don't need a doctor's time. It's infuriating
I agree it's infuriating that people try to game the system!!
I think we should look to those who build the systems, they can learn from this and avoid those 'perverse incentives'

@Soontobe60 😂 you win the thread, I love it.

@Oxo01 if your surgery is 90 mins away are you even sure you safe still in catchment?

@Kazzyhoward
Far too many doctors are now working very part time hours. We have a neighbour who only works one morning per week - just what was the point of the tens of thousands of pounds in training costs, and taking a training place, for one sodding morning? At the end of the day, thanks to Blair, they're paid so much, they don't need to work every day and still earn plenty to live on. Not to mention early retirement due to stupid "tax the rich" tax/pension rules which mean they can be not much worse off by retiring (and setting themselves up as limited company locums for the odd session) than carrying on working proper hours for a few more years.

If it's that easy, retrain and come and join us!