AIBU to be annoyed that my GP seems to have no plans in place to see patients as we come out of lockdown?

[everydayiwritethebook]

After reading another poster's thread where she couldn't be seen by a GP and ended up at A&E, it struck me just how angry I am about not being able to see a GP face to face (socially distanced of course).
I have had a couple of instances where I've needed to see a GP, and my DC urgently needs to see one face to face, but we can't. I understand during lockdown it was necessary, but I haven't been able to see a GP in 14 months and now that most places are back at work (I work with the public and have been back for several weeks), it feels like they're taking the piss.
It's actually got worse at my surgery - today I took a letter in for my GP about being referred for a condition, and whereas previously they had a locked foyer which you could enter one at a time, now the front door is locked and you speak to the receptionist via intercom! I was also told my letter would be quarantined for 72 hours, even though I said it is urgent.
I feel like they are really failing their patients now, and I wondered what other people's experiences or thoughts were about this?

Errrgh. Tell me about it. I've had a few online questionnaire type consultations with my GP in the last year and in return I get a telephone consultation. The worst was a few months ago when I was having an asthma attack and had to wait 2 hours for several people to call me back to rule out covid before they would let me go to A&E. I can't breath but sure, have several people on the end of the phone assess me beforehand. It's not like it's life or death...oh wait..thankfully when I got to the hospital they were amazing because our NHS is amazing! But the hoops you have to jump through to get seen now. Awful.

Couldn't agree more op although I have been able to see my gp twice face 2 face but that was after many phone appointments.

@winesolveseverything I have a friend who worked in Covid ICU since last February and he is none too impressed by the GPs actions either.

I've spent the last year talking on the phone about the same problem, which hasn't responded to any treatment.
I have to wait a week to speak to a nurse, give the meds 2 weeks and see how I am, procrastinate for a week or so, then rinse and repeat.
It isn't urgent or dangerous, but it also isn't getting better.

Quarantining your letter for 72 hours is unnecessary; recent studies show that the risk of transmission in this way is very small indeed. Earlier studies used a much higher concentration of the virus than would normally occur. Yes

You would think health professionals might realise that.

What has vaccine delivery right now got to do with decades of a system failing half the UK population?

Healthcare is USELESS if it can't be accessed appropriately. Additionally, to criticise the wider system is not to judge all GPs personally for their work or efforts.

Or, would you seriously suggest it's all been working fine until now?

Honestly, my GP has been great.
If I need an appt, I just log on to the app at 8am and pick a phone appt slot. They call, if need be they can switch to video call, and if they need to see you they book you an appt, usually for that afternoon.

My kids are at a different surgery, and a few days ago I was concerned about DS. I called the surgery at 11am, got a callback from the GP at 12pm, and we went to see him at 2:30pm.

So clearly some areas have gotten this working well. I have no idea why others are struggling so badly. My surgery was good pre-Covid though - was just log on to the app at 8am and pick your appt for that day (or up to 2 weeks away)

Fwiw I prefer this system - a lot of issues can be sorted over the phone or via video, and it’s far easier than having to go all the way to the surgery and hang around for ages. Instead of half a day (or even a whole day) off work, I can just duck out for 10 minutes instead.

I sadly lost my dad In August. In June my mum tried for a whole month to get him seen as his speech was failing and his balance. They kept remotely sending urine samples out to my mum. I even went to the surgery and begged them to see him as soon as travel restrictions lifted and I saw how poorly he was.
Eventually we took my dad to a and e
As we thought it may have been a stroke
It turned out to be a brain tumour. We lost him 4 weeks later. They utterly failed him.

I work in education and we have been expected to work face to face all the way through. We provided key worker cover for pupils with parents who were covid Ward staff. We had to fight for vaccines. Yet GP's seem to be closeted away.

It’s frustrating - fill out a lengthy online form, then the GP phones back at some point but you don’t know when, even what day, so there’s a good likelihood of missing the call, then you have to phone back and wait in a queue and leave a message, then wait for another call back at some point. I’m awaiting a call back about my child ‘in the week of the 26th April’. I work. It’s pretty frustrating.

I prefer it too, in principle, if there is a sensible system in place.

I completely agree with you, OP. My GP practice has been awful too, and like a pp's is basically using the pandemic as an excuse to double down on what was already a rapidly deteriorating service. There seems to be massive variability nationwide, though, and my observation is that good practices have learned from the constraints of the pandemic to diversify what they can offer, whereas bad ones have done the opposite.

I wonder if GPs are aware that people are rightly angry about this?

There have been a few threads on this topic recently, and mostly the GPs who have contributed to them have been very defensive, even though the problem, as I see it, is more to do with practice organisation than with the willingness of the clinical staff to work. My own GP is fantastic, but is constantly having to work against the systems of his own workplace to get things done (for which I am very grateful).

For various reasons, as a family we have had a fair number of contacts with hospital services over the last year and my experience has repeatedly been that hospital doctors are very frustrated with the way GPs have apparently dropped out of sight for the duration, so I don't think it can just be bolshy MNers noticing it. The hospital doctors we've seen have without exception been fantastic, despite, I'm sure, having just as trying a time of it as GPs.

@Pottedpalm yes 72 hours seems excessive. Interestingly a school friend is a professor of immunology and on the board of the national covid emergency response body, and she thinks that is over the top!

Love the targeted advertising on this thread!

www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/workload/general-practice-feeling-really-difficult-right-now-primary-care-director-admits/

Pharmacies have been open throughout as well and have patients referred from the surgery as it's ok for them to see people face to face but the surgery couldn't possibly!

@Saladd0dger

My surgery have always been poor only now they are using covid as a excuse. Only surgery I can register with. I’ll probably collapse before they refer me to anyone. Constant pins and needles and numbness on my legs is no fun. Even the asthma nurse lies on my medical file saying perfectly fine no asthma symptoms when Iv literally been gasping for breath for over a year

@Saladd0dger Are you able to get your vitamin B12 levels checked? I have low grade neurological symptoms like pins and needles, numbness and muscle twitching when I'm due for an injection.

I've been to my GP a few times during lockdown sometimes more urgent sometimes not ? Think it must depend on each practise

@Buttybach This is really sad and honestly sounds like negligence.

There seems to be a lot of variation between practices. My new GP is ok but the way my previous one was working was dangerous. I had one “consultation “ where I sent in a picture of newborn’s rash. They asked me nothing about his symptoms or the rash and just texted back that it was ok and then closed down the consultation. My friend had a similar experience and ended up in a and e with a very sick baby. I don’t think any Gp would dismiss symptoms like that in a baby if they saw them in person.

My surgery isn't even answering their phones. It's been a nightmare. We have to book online but it isn't just a straight forward booking system we have to send a message to the receptionist about our symptoms and then hope for a call back. The whole process wasn't clear. Last month I went backwards and forwards for 3 days with the receptionist online replying back to me with really unhelpful messages rather than just asking a doctor to call me, all the while my symptoms and pain were getting worse.

I've been tried to get a dr appointment for 6 months! Getting past the receptionist was a chore and I was regularly asked if I knew there was a pandemic going on when I dared to query their decision!

I eventually got a phone consultation and the DR agreed blood work needed done, more than likely needed a hospital referral and a change to my medication only to then tell me they can't tell me when bloods would be taken as they don't offer that at the moment and that they wouldn't refer until bloods were done.

I've just finished the complaint email to the practice manager.

[quote everydayiwritethebook]@CatsRock My surgery will only let you make an appointment on the day. Absolutely no advance booking of appointments. You ring at 8am, often spend 45 minutes on hold only to be told ring back tomorrow. Rinse and repeat. It took me four days to get a phone appointment. And then only because I broke down in tears on the phone. It really isn't fit for purpose, and is totally inappropriate in many cases. [/quote]
Your GP surgery sounds like mine. It was bad before Covid, but now they can blame Covid for their shabby practices.

I was on the phone for nearly 1½ hours recently, I was 26th in the queue, literally waiting for a human being to answer the phone. I have an auto-immune disease, and just need my usual routine blood tests to be done. The receptionist finally answered the phone, but the system is that I have to have a GP appointment by phone on that day. But there are no appointments left that day.

So, at 8am the next day, and the next day, ad infinitum, I am obliged to ring until I can have that on-the-day appointment. There is no facility to be able to leave a message to just request the routine bloods to be done (which I have to have regularly). I have to talk to a GP on the phone.

And they don't seem to understand that people can't sit on the phone for hours every day waiting for someone to answer the phone to make that on-the-day appointment. And there is no understanding that people don’t sit in their homes all day long able to take that GP phone call later on.

A receptionist once made a very shirty comment to me as to whether I could really be ill when I said I was going to be out for about an hour one day. Er, yes, I have lived with my condition for many years, I still have a life. I only need my usual routine blood tests. They seem unable to comprehend that not everyone is confined to their beds all day long – people work, have families, do school runs, have things to do – it doesn’t mean that they don’t still need medical help.

But it means that means that I can only ring up on a day when I have easy access to my phone all day long, and I have been unable to make that phone call again for two weeks now.

I would happily leave my GP surgery, but other surgeries won’t take new patients on. It is a total nightmare.

Our gps phone patients first, then see them face to face if deemed necessary,

My GP used to be fantastic and their online portal was super easy for requesting repeat prescriptions or requesting same day telephone appointments.

However, you now can’t do that and have to call the surgery at 8 to wait and wait and wait and not get an appointment.

I take thyroxine for my hypothyroidism. When I have one month left of my tablets, I request a repeat online, the doctor sends me for a blood test and then I go and collect them each month for the next year from the pharmacy. Except he has declined my repeat request and no one can tell me why. The receptionist can’t tell me why and says I have to book an appointment to ask him. But I can’t book an appointment

Has anyone used any of the online doctor apps? I think you have to pay a monthly fee but a colleague was telling me how great the one they use is and that they always get a same day video call.

I think I’d much rather a video call than a phone appointment after two GPs diagnosed me as having shingles last year when actually I had keto rash

I’m sure some GPS are working well face to face but I have worked acutely in a hospital throughout. Some of the referrals are ridiculous because they won’t see the patient. Or patients have been misdiagnosed and treated wrongly as not seen face to face.

I quite like the online system, sometimes you don’t need a face to face appointment however I do feel some are using it to not see patients that should be seen in person

I get the need for infection control and minimising contacts but vaccines are rolled out and we have PPE. Lateral flow tests could be used too. People can wait in their cars or outside if no waiting room space. Lots of people are working face to face now. It’s time to get things on track.