From GP practice managers

[Bagamoyo1]

m.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR2ZqCHbGq9Tn0WtOYD5B8y8CnjF-MjkmH2tAEz42wEArKz-pl0QRb5s9hI&v=3ru4QhVZ2a8&feature=youtu.be

If you work in a public-facing role then you are going to get some rude behaviour directed at you from members of the public. That goes with the territory. It's not right, but it is what it is.

This.

I'm a teacher and I don't go around making videos about how some 14yo said "fuck off you ugly fat cow" I suck it up and deal with it in the best way I can at the time. With some jobs, a thick skin is required.

@BeaLesshasty yes at the moment I get £8.91 an hour which is 1p more than the £8.90 I got before minimum wage was increased in April.

If you work in a public-facing role then you are going to get some rude behaviour directed at you from members of the public. That goes with the territory. It's not right, but it is what it is.

It shouldn't be normalised though. Plus certain sectors have seen a massive increase in abusive behaviour since the start of the pandemic. It makes your work life very difficult and impacts massively on your mental health. It shouldn't need to be simply 'put up with'.

@Graphista I am so sorry for what has happened to your DD along with other family members. Including yourself.

My story is somewhat similar to you in that I attended countless appointments for an issue but fobbed off every single time. By the time I was finally listened to by a locum GP the damage had already been done. Surgery ended up showing how the massive delay had caused unreversible damage.

@Dunlin
I think most people understand that gp services have been over-stretched for many years, but what people are annoyed about is the way that gps, almost alone amongst services, have totally (or effectively) shut down due to COVID. People just cannot understand WHAT gps are doing (if they’re not vaccinating, which many aren’t most days of the week). They can’t understand WHY they can’t sit in a spacious waiting room rather than squishing into a tiny vestibule. They can’t understand WHY it is suddenly impossible to answer a phone. Or why a telephone appointment cannot have even an approximate time.

You have the inside knowledge on this, so could you tell us?

At a gp practice near me (not my own, thankfully, but one I had to ring with a v specific enquiry), they are simply liars; I was told I was number 10 in the queue. An hour and 15 minutes later I had made it to number one. And then waited at number one for a further 30 minutes. They were never going to answer that call. No one can take that long to deal with ten calls.

The receptionists at my current practice are all absolutely brilliant. Never thought I would be able to say that as I've always had extremely poor interactions previously with receptionists from previous practice.

The ones at my current one are always lovely and treat you like a human being. I am always polite to them and I always used to be to the previous lot also.

However, being denied medication whenever request wasn't processed properly despite having proof it was submitted and the receptionists with their couldn't care less attitude and complete and utter rudeness and snideness was absolutely out of order.

Not talking about basic meds. - even then being treated like that wouldn't be appropriate - but talking about specialist medication in order to enable me to have the basic ability to move and do simple things.

Being without means I have to go to hospital as a result.

I've always been polite but when you know you are going to be left in absolute agony and are already extremely sore to be met by someone who is talking down to you with zero understanding and complete rudeness it is obviously going to make the situation a lot worse.

I have stated that one day if they happen to be so unwell or have a chronic condition then I would imagine they would then understand that being treated and put down like they do would make them understand. No trace of basic empathy at all.

The irony is that my condition is caused by the practice's lack of action to begin with which lasted such a long time.

Majority of GPs there were nasty also and made someone in extreme pain cry numerous times same as the rude receptionists. Couple of nicer GPs were there but trying to get access was practically impossible. Then the nice ones quickly moved on constantly and the nasty ones were left behind.

My current one at another surgery is amazing. Honestly couldn't ask for a better GP at all and due to previous experiences was actually beyond shocked how nice she was! Receptionists also are great.

It goes to show the difference between staff having basic empathy and kindness. I understand if someone is being rude from the get go it can get receptionists backs up and they likely will be short with the rude patient. However, a lot will be like that as they are automatically on the defensive due to poor treatment previously. Also some rude people will also just be like that in general!

When you're in pain, anxious and upset etc being met by someone who is outright rude and nasty to you is not acceptable at all. Plenty of reasons why people feel like that and especially if there is a history of this with the practice the patient will know that their request for important meds has been screwed up yet again and the patient is expected to then basically be unable to move or look after children properly due to the surgery not caring. Also the patient then has to attend hospital as a result and in my case kept in due to issues caused by no meds. Having to sort out emergency childcare when there is only one person who can take them is not exactly an easy task. All due to a surgery constantly messing up their job.

I shall stop now! And no I'm not bitter despite it likely sounding as though I am. Just utterly fed up of how we're supposed to put up with "care" like that.

At work we did a survey of healthcare practitioners across EU5 seeing patients F2F or remote and the different between the EU4 and the UK was stark

Whatever decisions were made to move so wholesale to remote medicine here can be seen as unusual (comparatively across countries) and may have risked health / health worsening due to poor ability to deliver medicine effectively that way (barrier to access, inability to diagnose effectively etc)

Yet like many topics any kind of nuanced discussion seems to be polarising towards “GP and staff - good, anyone who disagrees - bad”

GPs are gate keepers. We can’t refer every patient to hospital on the off-chance they might have a serious condition, because that could apply to every patient we see, and the hospital would be brought to its knees in the first half hour of the day. We have to make a guess at what the problem could be, based on symptoms, signs, duration, probability, experience etc. We then have to test this guess, using blood tests, xrays, treatments - in the hope that this will bring us closer to the answer. Obviously some things are clear cut - crushing central chest pain on exertion in an overweight smoker is likely to be cardiac. Diarrhoea and rectal bleeding for months in an elderly person requires urgent referral to check for cancer. But other things are less obvious. A headache could be stress, migraine, sinusitis, viral illness, temporal arthritis, a brain tumour, short-sightedness, or literally just a transient headache. If we sent everyone with a headache for a brain scan then the system would collapse.
Of course we sometimes get it wrong, and those are the times people remember. But there isn’t really an alternative method. Scans, xrays etc are not without risk. So even if resources were unlimited, it still wouldn’t be appropriate to investigate everyone immediately.
The system is swamped by demand, utterly swamped. Those of you slagging off GPs and essentially saying we’re lazy - you have no idea. No idea at all. And when primary care collapses, as it inevitably will, I think you may regret your relentless criticism.
I’m going to leave this thread now, because as someone else said, my mental health can’t take any more of a battering from the baying crowd.

Also missed the fact my child had a serious ear infection and despite me calling them back very concerned about her as the pain was getting worse they still fobbed me off at reception.

Including when fluid started coming out of her ear!

So my child then had to attend numerous appts to have her ear "hoovered" at the hospital as the ear drum had burst hence the pain getting worse for her.

When I contacted the surgery regarding this I was told that I supposedly called in to say she needed "less Calpol" now there is no mistaking what I had told them numerous times on the phone when things got worse. It is actually on her notes that is what I supposedly told them!

Got to love blatant covering their backsides!

But as a final thought - many of us were unhappy and frustrated with the service offered by schools and teachers over the past year. We wondered what teachers were doing all day, when the online learning consisted of being set a worksheet at 9am that no one marked.
Did anyone tell the teachers that they hoped their family died? Did they slash their car tyres? Did they call them a fucking bitch? Of course not.
Why is this behaviour acceptable in healthcare?

So apparently then it is fine for patients to attend multiple appts over a long period of time with obvious symptoms that are ignored and not picked up on.... which then leaves the patient with severe damage internally which is unfixable?

What about their mental health? Being constantly not listened to, put down, made to feel like an "attention seeker" amongst numerous other things and now has to depend on a cocktail of meds in order to be able to do basic tasks.

I would say that that takes its toll massively on their mental health. As well as life long impact due to the "care" being non-existent

Also being made unfertile due to negligence is just a walk in the park....

Think about how that messes with mental health. Particularly when you have had missed miscarriages and weren't listened to when stating something was wrong. So there goes the much wanted pregnancy and also chance of ever having another child.

Did anyone tell the teachers that they hoped their family died? Did they slash their car tyres? Did they call them a fucking bitch? Of course not.

Bless you for thinking this.

At one point I was told to fuck off and go die by a parent (a dad of course) because I refused to set extra work during COVID for their speshul not half as gifted as they thinkchild. Our school took a policy of not allowing children to be burned out without homework.

Or a GP who due to their old fashioned belief that certain meds are "bad" medications despite the fact that they are very much needed due to the damage caused by negligence decides to disregard professional advice from the pain team who had stated that these were all required.

He then states out of the blue "to pick one to be reduced"

A GP with no understanding that due to the meds I can move etc and that without I cannot.

Luckily hospital stepped in and sorted what he did but yes yet another way of making a patient feel absolutely hopeless.

Just another day in the life of a chronic pain sufferer. Nevermind our mental health.

JMJ you clearly have issues individual incidents, which is not what this thread is about.

@FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop

Did anyone tell the teachers that they hoped their family died? Did they slash their car tyres? Did they call them a fucking bitch? Of course not.

Bless you for thinking this.

At one point I was told to fuck off and go die by a parent (a dad of course) because I refused to set extra work during COVID for their speshul not half as gifted as they thinkchild. Our school took a policy of not allowing children to be burned out without homework.

That’s awful. Whatever you do, don’t start a thread about it on here, because you’ll be treated to a litany of stories about evil teachers, in order to justify such treatment.

Heaven forbid I say anything negative.

No it is my experience of appalling receptionists. Which leads on to appalling "care" and failures of receptionists to enable appts or to process repeat meds correctly. As others have had also.

Also, interesting how other posters have mentioned how their diagnosis were left for such a long time also.

Why is this behaviour acceptable in healthcare?

It really isn't and no one has condoned it but you have posted a video which implies surgery staff have worked harder than ever over the last 14 months, people's experience simply does not reflect that claim and they are annoyed about the emotive appeal for sympathy.

I have a few minor medical issues and need repeat prescriptions which are now dealt with by the local Pharmacy takes a week to get now as the surgery is too busy to process, I call the pharmacy, they contact the surgery, surgery sends the paperwork. previously call surgery, collect prescription from pharmacy next few days.

I also have suffered with skin cancer in the past and anything on my skin I spot is seen by the doctor and if suspect refereed to hospital, since Covid the receptionists at my surgery have refused any appointments for this. I did bump into my doctor, same one for 20 years in the yacht club, he asked how I was, I explained that there was a couple of moles that had changed a little and was told to come and see him in the surgery. I explained the problem with appointments, he gave me his mobile Number, said call in the morning, saw him in the afternoon, 4 days later dermatology dept organising minor surgery. turned out they where cancerous.....

The NHS are/have been fantastic the issue can be getting past the receptionist for a appointment.

What I don’t understand is how receptionists were able to answer the phone before March 2020, and are now physically incapable of doing so.

My newborn had a repeat prescription (but I had to log her weight with GP first) and the surgery failed to send it over to the pharmacy three times despite saying that they’d done it. In the end I had to be one of those annoying patients who go to the surgery and knock on the door for 30mins being annoying until they’d talk to me. They checked the system and apparently the notes had been made but nothing done. They assured me it would be at pharmacy by the end of the day. I called in at pharmacy twice a day and for 3 days and nothing. Got through to surgery for the 4th time and the receptionist straight out told me she’d forgotten to do it.

It took over a week to get her script and approx 5 hours of me phoning.

Further, when I was getting her weighed the GP surgery said they weren’t doing baby weighing clinics and I had to go through health visitors. HV could only give me a weighing appt 3 weeks away. When I went they got pissy at me for not having it done at the GP surgery. I now know to start the process of getting my baby’s next prescription 4 weeks in advance. From reading this thread, I feel unfortunately that I’ve been lucky in getting a prescription for her at all.

This thread has been a pretty upsetting read this morning. It's not the receptionists fault you can't get an appointment. There needs to a massive shake up because appointment availability is so poor, but it's not the bloody receptionists fault.

My surgery is fantastic.

Friend who lives the other side of town has waited 13 weeks for a psychiatrist appointment after a MH breakdown severe enough to see her in hospital 3 times in the last 3 months.

Finally had a telephone consultation with psychiatrist. Who sent a report to GP with a prescription on it. GP receptionist didn't feel it was important enough to bother reading, archived it so no meds. Then when friend chased told her she needed to go back to psychiatrist. It took friend ringing crisis team and 2 additional weeks, the psychiatrist ringing the GP (and being furious he couldn't get through on the phone) and various other agencies getting involved before she was prescribed the meds, 15 weeks after a suicide attempt.

@Bagamoyo1 I find the full-time/part-time analogy quite interesting actually. Full-time for my junior grade staff is 36 hpw. Full time for the majority of professionally qualified staff is closer to 55/60 hpw - more at peak times. It isn't just GPs who work very hard, almost every professional does.

I have found GP reception staff to comprise some of the most helpful people I have come across and regrettable also some of the rudest and most unhelpful. No other business would get away with unanswered phone services.

Personally the service from my gp has been significantly better during Covid because I haven't had to phone them. I have requested prescriptions over the portal and the two consultations and one referral I have required have been dealt with far more expediently than they would have been previously. For example I haven't had to spend up to an hour ringing in to be offered an apt at 11am when I work full-time an hour away (in non covid times).

The principal issue with the NHS is the notion that it is free. It is free only at the point of delivery and it needs in my opinion to be structured more like the French and German systems where depending on means money may change hands followed by a social insurance claim.

There are also aspects of the NHS that are totally absurd. Because I have levothyroxine I get every prescription free not just that . It is utterly wrong compared to someone who has chronic/acute asthma and who may earn less than a quarter of my salary. Don't tempt me onto the make work scenarios of 56/28 day prescribing.

To be honest threads like this make me wish primary care would hurry up and break, then it can be privatised

If your husband is a GP then surely you know that GPs are private businesses subcontracted by the NHS already.

Perhaps that is the problem and they should be nationalised.

Many GP practices would benefit from decent customer service practices.

@Bagamoyo1

I think it’s so sad that a film full of hideous quotes, threats of violence and actually violence towards GP surgery staff brings a response of horror from a minority. Most posters simply use the opportunity to slag off their own surgery. It speaks volumes. The reason people get angry is because they can’t get an appointment. The reason people can’t get appointments is because there aren’t enough GPs. The reason there aren’t enough GPs is because there’s a recruitment crisis. The reason there’s a recruitment crisis is because of, among other things, what you saw in that film. It’s hard to know what can improve this situation.

No no, it is ALL the receptionists fault. I've heard the exact quote in that video many times - once from someone who as it turned out had a small cut next to his nail and he continued to abuse staff all day on the phone. He eventually turned up to the surgery and a nurse saw him. His "gaping wound" required a small plaster. I also had a patient say that if her daughter had a seizure it would be my fault - because the pharmacy had refused to dispense the quantity of medication we had prescribed. Most of the general public are fine and the majority of receptionists are too. This video is needed but as seen in this thread, lots of people will still blame the receptionist for following instructions given by the GPs.