My doctors surgery still won't provide contraception

[Tittie]

The only suitable contraception left for me is the coil, but my doctors surgery won't fit one because of covid. But they will let me have a smear. But they can't fit a coil while they're down there, so to speak.

But I can go to the pub for a piss up and take the kids to soft play. I can eat at a restaurant without a mask, I can have beauty treatments, but I can't have a coil fitted while both me and the HCP are wearing PPE.

Argh!

Defeat* not “default”

OP you better add how it affects your husband in your letter then. It may help the MP listen.

It’s ridiculous. In the same boat here.

Also find it an outrage that people can go to pub, work, school etc but women are largely being forced to have no support for antenatal care, scans, no doulas, limited partner support.

I'd try calling PALS at your local CCG. They're usually really nice and will do their best to help. GP surgeries are still being paid in full and should be providing their contracted services.

I'm still waiting too, 7 months PP and I have been ringing. They keep offering the pill but if I wanted the pill I'd bloody ask for it.

My surgery have just started to offer coil fitting again. I was cancelled in March. My appointment 6wks ago was cancelled again due to a local lockdown again-it's apparently not so much the fitting but the slight risk of something going wrong which could require hospital treatment that is the issue.

I'm on HRT so have had to stop oestrogen my patches as the coil gives me progesterone so it's a nightmare in the opposite sense.

GP does not have to offer this, it's an added service ( run at a loss I expect).

But you should have access to family planning via gum clinic locally

I've been on a waiting list since April. Appointment is meant to be in october but has been cancelled once already so not holding out hope. Local sexual health will only help those under 25 so no good for me.

I had mine fitted at end of June. Had it cancelled a couple of days before lockdown. There's no reason that they can't fit one of they are doing other intimate procedures like a smear, assuming they have the staff available! Id be kicking up a fuss with practice manager (in writing) and local MP etc

I'd try calling PALS at your local CCG. I wonder if CCGs would even get involved with this; sexual health is a public health responsibility. Worth a go I suppose!

GP does not have to offer this, it's an added service Why do they usually do it, just because of the QOF points?

Your surgery should be offering coils. We started back in Jul/Aug. There is National Guidance from Faculty of Sexual Health and Reproduction to do them.

My surgery wouldn't do a smear test and coil fitting at the same time and this was pre covid. When I asked why they told me that a nurse can do the smear test but a doctor needed to fit the coil and clinics were not on the same day.

It's a bit shitty that they are still refusing to fit coils for women. I thought they were encouraging people to carry on using their doctor's surgeries?

I'm pretty sure my local CCG would think it was our problem. Women having babies they didn't want is a lot more stress in the system than them having contraception they do want, and the local area functions as a system partnership, so the public health lead is employed jointly with the council. But I think I'm pretty lucky with where I live.

Coils and implants are Public Health not CCG or QOF.

We've literally just restarted fitting them last week. The problem is it's a long appointment- about 20-30mins all told- with at least 3 people in a fairly small room, which is why they were paused during the height of covid, and why we may have to pause them again if numbers go up. It also takes out a GP and practice nurse for 30mins each plus clean up time, which is hard to fit in as we are so swamped at the moment. Realistically we can offer 2-4 a week, and we have a huge backlog to get through.

GPs don't HAVE to fit coils and many don't- its an enhanced service and paid per coil fitted- as as a PP said above, it's not actually financially sensible to do it; we do it because we like to offer the service to our patients.
I will happily do a smear if it's due when a coil is fitted, but our nurses can't fit a coil during a smear- they aren't trained to do so.
Hope you get it done soon.

I don't have the coil but had to wait 6 weeks for an implant.

Essentially my GP had to fight tooth and nail for permission to do them and basically outlining what they are doing to prevent Covid transmission. Essentially all consent forms done in advance, no talking at all on the day due to proximity etc.

My GP do 4 a week and that's it.

I waited a year for a coil at my GPs surgery, and mentioned this in passing when I was talking to the GP about my horrendous periods (whole other long story). They were like 'oh, we don't do them anymore. The GP that did the fittings has left'. Thanks for telling me.

We have a sexual health clinic that's 40 minutes away. I can't get childcare for that long to go to a drop in session, and the evening sessions are only for under 25s for some reason. Plus, the drop in doesn't guarantee I'd be seen, and I'd still have to go back a second time for the fitting. I've finally given up.

I have recentl]y paid a pharmacist to check my daughters blood pressure with regard to the contraceptive pill. The gp surgery could not do it ..........madness

@Tistheseason17

Your surgery should be offering coils. We started back in Jul/Aug. There is National Guidance from Faculty of Sexual Health and Reproduction to do them.

This is brilliant, thank you @Tistheseason17 , I've found the document and will enclose it in the letter to the practice.

There's some great advice here and I'm writing several letters

It just shouldn't be a postcode lottery. If some surgeries are able to offer the service in a safe way then I don't see why mine can't too. It's a new, big, spacious and well ventilated building.

I do accept that a smear/coil fitting at the same time is logistically impractical if it requires different staff, but my point is that if they're happy to do smears (and indeed chase me up when I put it off), then why not an IUD too? At a sexual health clinic of all places.

I'm happy to wait if there's a backlog, I get it, I just want an appointment booked.

No GO near me fits them, they closed loads of clinics in the cuts (including my nearest) and the remainder still aren't keen on seeing people at present.

That said, I got an appt to get mine removed pdq (probably helped by it being overdue thanks to covid & a house move) but having to cross the county to sort it made me decide against a replacement (a decision I'd already considered but it was a final deciding factor). It's bloody ridiculous - I get on with so few forms of bc & can't be the only one. Luckily whilst we're not TTC right now (although I had to say that to avoid being lectured like a child) coil out was sort of the first step and a pregnancy wouldn't be bad news. Not the case for many people, I'm sure. Yet we get spoken to like school girls and they're willing to absorb the higher impact of more babies on the system & on women who perhaps didn't choose.

Complaining worked! The Practice is fitting IUDs again. I've got an appointment