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.

GP’s are not paid well for their years of training and study. The hours are horrendous and can wreak your health. Many GP’s (my DH included) are burnt out and reduce their hours in order to continue working at all.

If it’s that good a job, why aren’t you at GP?

I rang my new doctors to ask about registration, without a lie I had to listen to a 10 fucking minute spiel about their new online service. I absolutely lost my shit and was pretty rude to the receptionist when I got through, I wasn't proud of myself but I have half an hour for lunch in an extremely high pressure NHS job and I don't need my entire lunch break being taken up with one phone call.
It's disgusting.

In my daughter's grammar school so many girls want to become doctors. But even with excellent A level grades many cannot get a place to study medicine. The government are saying they plan to increase the number of places. It should be done urgently. There are plenty of people who want to train to become doctors.

Same at my son's school. They have to jump through hoops to get anywhere near a medical school place - massive demand for places, so obviously too few training places available. I'm sure at one time the doctors union were opposed to increasing the number of medical school training places.

Many GP’s (my DH included) are burnt out and reduce their hours in order to continue working at all.

Thus putting more pressure on their colleagues! If doctors weren't retiring early and weren't working so part time, the workload wouldn't be so bad, would it?

And incidentally I feel the same about every call centre in the country and the council offices. It is not possible to conduct my business in half an hour with this option and that option.
One of these days my problems will be over because I'll be dead after a massive stress coronary.

And even worse, when I look at the student doctors who were at university with DH and me roughly 30% of them swanned off to Australia or NZ as soon as they qualified. All that money poured into their training and the UK didn't benefit one bit.

The80's charging for appointments and missed appointment wouldn't work or be fair. There would be too many exempt groups, children, unemployed, and particularly the elderly who use the NHS most (and DNA frequently). No-one would question a 45 year old being fined but threaten to fine an 85 year old and there'd be uproar.
The same squeezed middle (as per with prescription charges for example) would be the only poor sods penalised and subsidising everyone else.

My GP surgery doesn’t do blood tests...you have to go to a hospital... in the next county!

It can work the other way, try to ring to cancel an appointment : that is not easy either! Then they say people are missing them and not telling them.
Again, I don't have the answers!

@user1497207191 have you read the posts here explaining why doctors work “part time”. As I said before - full time can be 70 hours a week, this would be the case regardless of staffing. I work 40 hours a week which is considered part time - but is in keeping with most people’s full time hours.

Are you genuinely saying all Drs should have to work 70 hour weeks? That’s not good for patient care. Also what about parents? Carers? You would effectively be writing women out of medicine if you removed “part time” options.

The problem isn’t doctors retiring early. The problem is the job is crap. If the working environment was better, (and this isn’t just due to poor staffing, if you read the previous posts you’ll see there are many other reasons it’s crap) then more GPs would stay.

It is crap. My DH tried to get an appointment for 3 weeks. They told him to go to the out of hours- he did. The out of hours told him they could do nothing as they can only treat and not refer and he urgently needed to see a GP.

Finally saw a GP. Admitted to hospital with cancer the same day. So now has cancer- you would think that justified an emergency GP appointment from time to time- but no it doesn't. So cant get basic care and prescriptions filled even with cancer ongoing.

@user1497207191 - other employees are entitled to work part time hours - why shouldn’t GP’s?

I'm talking more about all the GPs who only work a couple of half days per week. That's not 40 hours. At our surgery, there are some who only do one half day per week - i.e. when I ask for an appt with Dr X, the receptionist says "they only work thursday afternoons".

other employees are entitled to work part time hours - why shouldn’t GP’s?

How many other employees have enormous amounts of taxpayer money spent on their training. There should be some form of working requirement within the NHS to stop them beggaring off abroad or doing ridiculously small amounts of work, otherwise there needs to be some kind of payback of the costs of their training.

How many other professionals have their training paid for by the taxpayer? Accountants, solicitors, architects, etc etc either pay for their own professional training/qualifications or it's paid by their employers with clawbacks in their contract of employment.

@user you realise they probably work elsewhere as well? A lot of GPs do other work, for example out of hours, teaching, federation or speciality work etc.

Why shouldn't a GP work reduced hours if they wish? Better than that no hours, which may well be the alternative. They are only paid for the hours they work.

@user1497207191 I don’t know why your under the impression that the public pays large amounts for Drs training? Even when they are training as juniors they do a massive amount of service provision and certainly ‘pay their own way’ so to speak. Hospitals wouldn’t function without them.

Google for a pharmacy that administers diabetes checks near you. That will either give you some reassurance on one possibility or a pointer.

@user1497207191 - my DH came to the UK to work as a doctor. During training the hourly rate was appalling. We are at the planning stage in leaving the UK and (apart from Brexit) the state of the NHS is the main reason.

Free places to study medicine at a UK university? Where is this pray tell?

@CaptainButtock

for historical reasons some practices get significantly more funding than others. Some have more difficult patient groups (more who don't speak English, more nursing homes, more deprivation). Some find it harder to recruit staff so have to pay more. etc etc etc.

there are lots of reasons why some practices have a harder time than others.

@parker is completely right -after leaving med school I started on £21k a year and I worked over 100 hours a week... I was earning less than the cleaners/porters per hour, and certainly well less than minimum wage. Junior doctors keep the hospital running, they add far more value than they cost.

Totally agree it’s not between part time and full time; it’s between part time and not at all in most cases. I work 2.5 days a week on paper- in reality I got home at 4pm on my ‘half day’ yesterday and 7.30 pm today. In from 8 am both days. I have significant health issues myself so there is absolutely no way I could work full time, I would have to retire.

I work in a gp's and the big problem is people's expectations are too high and they are very demanding!!

We have the option of turning up at 8am to be seen on the same day which sounds great but not so much in reality. I went just before Christmas (22nd or 23rd dec), arrived at 8:09 and there were 30 people in front of me!! It’s ridiculous. Hope you feel better soon op x