AIBU - I have called the GP over 200 times this morning

[IAmADancer]

Just that. I need to get a blood test referral for menopause symptoms but I can’t get through. I started calling at 8am and have called over 200 times. It’s still engaged.

I know that if I call back at 10am when it’s quieter they will tell me there are no appointments and to call back tomorrow. Then you go through the same routine all over again. I just want to access basic care. Feeling very frustrated

My surgery is the same - no e-consult or email booking. I wanted to see someone about a non-urgent issue (gastric), and phoned at a lunchtime, explained to the receptionist that it was absolutely not a same-day situation, and she actually booked me in for about six weeks down the line. Might that be worth trying, OP?

I had a phone appointment, and then had to go into the surgery for tests later on. The doctor was able to ring a prescription through to the local pharmacy on the same day as the appointment.

@IAmADancer

Couple of things. Firstly, Mondays are the absolute worst. I suggest trying again tomorrow or Wednesday. I find Thursdays tend to be quite successful in getting appts. Secondly, my GP moved to only phone at 8 am appointments for urgent and routine. I phoned for some blood test results one afternoon and a kind receptionist mentioned they do have some routine appointments! They had absolutely never advised this. I booked ahead of time. It was in 3 weeks but I felt I could wait. Obviously not sure if you can wait but definitely worth asking, :)

@PizzaCrust

What is wrong with some of the posters on this thread? Honestly. It’s like reading anti feminist bingo on here:

• OP is a woman so possibly can’t put her needs first and get a GP appointment
• OP has a “feminine” ailment so other women are now telling her that she shouldn’t get an appointment for it (if she had a physical injury I doubt the responses would be the same)
• OP has been told she doesn’t know how to use the phone. I’m sure someone who is at least, what, 35 years old knows how phones work.
• OP has been called “precious” amongst other names. Again, it would be doubtful that anyone would call someone worried about their child to the point of needing a GP appointment “precious”
• Other posters have took it upon themselves to (apparently) magically access OPs medical records and diagnose themselves that she “doesn’t need” an appointment, despite OP clearly telling us all that she does due to another condition. If she has been told by someone who is a medical professional and who actually has access to her notes she needs a blood test, I highly doubt nurse Barbara who lives 300 miles away and has never met OP knows any better. Oh, yes. They’re just assuming.
• People think because what happens in their little world is what happens to all of us. Just because your surgery has a queue system doesn’t mean OPs does. Who knew that people living in different parts of the world would have different circumstances to content with. What a revelation.

Also, if I see any more posts about a “blood bottle shortage” and they’re only doing blood tests if it’s “urgent”- I am going to fucking scream. You don’t know if it’s urgent. You have no bloody clue whether it’s urgent. I don’t care what job you do for the NHS- stop being so fucking patronising. Unless any poster on here knows OP, knows her medical history, knows her surgery and their protocol- you have no right to act like you know fuck all about it. So sit back down.

Similarly, it isn’t OPs fault there’s a shortage. She is fully entitled to ring her GP and request a blood test due to x valid reasons.

This thread is an absolute disgrace. And for all the healthcare workers who have came on here to lambast the OP, shame on you. You should know better than anyone that you don’t make assumptions in healthcare. That’s how people end up misdiagnosed and potentially die.

Shameful.

PizzaCrust I love you.

Drives me mad. MN thinks noone is ever entitled to NHS treatment ever.

@Knittingupastorm

There are always ways to contact your gp surgery online. It's in the contract.

In order to contact my surgery online you need to register and then turn up at the surgery with two forms of ID so they can give you a login. All reasonable to protect patient information of course.
However, it is currently impossible to do this as the doors are locked and you are only allowed in with an appointment. If you turn up with the ID, and knock on the window to talk to them (the only way to talk to them) they say they aren’t doing that at the moment and won’t look at it. They then slam the window shut.
I know this because it happened to me last week.

I wonder if you live in my town. I had the same experience last week. Our GP use something called PatientAccess which is supposed to allow you to book appointments online. You can't register for it unless you take I.D. to the surgery and then they will give you a code. Can't be done via email, over the 'phone, by letter, you have to turn up. I did. I took time off work, stood outside the locked surgery for 40 minutes and when it was finally my turn, I was turned away as they aren't doing this anymore.

Couple of things. Firstly, Mondays are the absolute worst. I suggest trying again tomorrow or Wednesday. I find Thursdays tend to be quite successful in getting appts.

Mondays and Fridays are always worst here- I assume eveyone's had to wait over the weekend or worry about waiting and getting worse over up coming weekend.

For those asking for solutions they way my previous surgery worked was quite good.

They allowed pre booked appointments for routine or regular matters and they were for the afternoon and the evening.

The morning appointments were turn up and wait - and they started at 8am but you could queue outside as early as you wanted to. There were 3 Drs and yuu were generally seen quite quickly unless you only wanted to see a specific one. So although there was a wait, you'd definitely be seen by 12 noon. So you could pick the day that you didn't work, or actually book leave in advance with your job and just turn up and wait. I often turned up at 7:30 and was number 2/2 in the queue and was seen and on my way to work at 8:15am.

@Bagamoyo1 There should be a system of booking that exists somewhere between 6 - 8 weeks ahead and on the day only. 3- 4 days perhaps? And all surgeries should have the option to book online or by phone. There's just no reasonable excuse for this not to be possible. In developed countries all over the world you can pick up your phone, book an appointment and see a GP. It needs to be the same here.

@India92

I sympathize, but what are the point of these GP surgery threads?

The government have failed to recruit and retain GPs despite an aging population. There is a nationwide shortage and GP surgeries are doing the best that they can. What more can they do if there's no GPs to recruit?

Don't bash overworked and over-stressed GPs, bash the government who have failed GP surgeries and the NHS.

What do you honestly expect the surgery to do? Do you think they love having a constant stream of angry patients calling them up?

exactly!

[quote Faffinator]@Bagamoyo1 There should be a system of booking that exists somewhere between 6 - 8 weeks ahead and on the day only. 3- 4 days perhaps? And all surgeries should have the option to book online or by phone. There's just no reasonable excuse for this not to be possible. In developed countries all over the world you can pick up your phone, book an appointment and see a GP. It needs to be the same here.[/quote]
But tell me, what happens when all the appointments are taken? What then?

@IAmADancer it's horrible isn't it? My GP is exactly like this. Lines open at 8 and you get a busy tone from the get go. I called 258 times in a row last week!! It's a joke that you can only get appointments on the day as well. Have you complained to them? Ours also avoid giving face to face appointments whenever they can.

@Bagamoyo1 I agree demand is massively more than supply and I don't have an answer. But wouldn't it be a start for there to be multiple ways to access the GP and a variety of prebookable and non-bookable appointments? I know I'd get less of the rage if I could see via an app that there were no appointments available, rather than wait in a phone queue for 50 minutes to be told the same.

@Bagamoyo1

Can I ask people what the solution is?

At our surgery we have several receptionists and several phones, and they answer the phones as soon as it rings. The second they put the phone down it rings again and they answer.
We have enough consulting rooms in our surgery to house enough doctors and nurses at a ratio of about 1 doctor per 2000 patients (standard quota). All the rooms are used all day Monday-Friday. Every doctor and nurse has a full surgery morning and afternoon.

So we can't employ more doctors/nurses as there aren't any spare rooms. We can't create more rooms as there's no space for them (we've already extended once and lost some car park).
We can't work longer hours as we already work 8-8.

We can't find more doctors even if we had the room (in fact we have actually advertised for an extra doctor, thinking we could use the meeting room as a consulting room, but we haven't had a single applicant).

Our doctor to patient ratio is normal, and has been the same for the 25+ years I've worked there.

The fact that our surgeries are all full means that clearly some patients are able to get through on the phone.

So tell me, if you were given the job of improving access at my surgery, what would you do? I'm especially interested as we have had this discussion countless times, and have yet to find a solution.

I'm sure it's frustrating on both sides. Not sure what the answer is though because even if you had a hundred doctors it probably still wouldn't be enough.

I know one thing the surgery I go to could do is to keep the website up to date. I have heard from a relaiable relative who also goes there, that the hours have changed but there's nothing on the website to tell me that.

There was a piece on the BBC news at 1 about this, about how although the NHS stands for national health service, there's not much "service".

Little story to lighten the mood: when I was 20 weeks pregnant with my first, I had to move GPs as I'd moved out of my hospital trust area so needed to register with the new midwives, health visitors etc.

I needed to speak to my doctors one day, after the baby had been born and I'd returned to work, so I'd say a good year later, about the little one as she was unwell.

I called the doctors 96 times before I managed to get through.
Once I'd finally got through, the doctors were telling me they couldn't find any record of her etc etc.
I was getting quite tetchy at this point as I'd taken her for her jabs, postnatal checks etc.

After a bit of back and forth with the receptionist, I asked which doctors I'd called. It was my old surgery...

Called the new one and got straight through

That story doesn’t help - person phones 96 times so jams up phone lines only to waste people’s time

Going off the topic a bit I know, and whilst I agree that the fault ultimately lies with the government I do think there are issues that can be addressed within the NHS.
For one reason and another, my family have been fairly heavy users of our local services in the last few years and there have been multiple errors and failings in all of our care, some clinical and serious but lots administrative and merely inconvenient for us, but probably costly for the organisation.
In the last fortnight alone, my DH has had an irate phone call wanting to know why he wasn't at an appointment he'd never received, my DS has received 2 appointments for the same thing on the same day, but at different times in different hospitals, my MIL has had a letter telling her to "follow the preadmission instructions on the enclosed leaflet" but there's no leaflet to be found, and I'm just girding my loins to phone the GP to ask why DS has only been given one week's worth of his medication instead of a month. Our surgery is a dispensing practice and I am not exaggerating when I say that I need to speak to them about at least 70% of our prescriptions. We get quite excited when something is correct first time.
If these things were occasional I wouldn't care. Human error can't be avoided completely. But I would say that there is at least 1 error of some kind in pretty much every interaction I have with the local health service, either primary or secondary care. I doubt the NHS has a specific vendetta against my family so I assume this is the norm. A lot of these things aren't "serious" but they all make extra work for someone and many probably cause delays and cost money. So there is room for improvement.
Yes, I know they are overworked and under resourced but there are also systems that are not fit for purpose and some staff who don't give a shit. I used to work for the local Trust so I know how things are supposed to work/ how to navigate the system and I still find it a struggle - it must be even harder for the average patient. Moving practice isn't an easy option here as there aren't many, and to be honest ours is probably one of the better ones. I can't afford private care for everything so don't have much choice other than to put up with things.
I do agree that our political masters must be challenged but that won't stop me advocating for myself and my family when we receive poor care - it doesn't have to be either/or.

Oh that's not fair @LukeEvansWife. Have you never made a mistake?

whats the solution?

In my practice stop having unqualified reception staff make medical decisions via an unacceptable computer program that takes zero account of real life and only if it says yes are you allowed to be triaged by a nurse who will decide if you need to be seen by them face to face and then if you're allowed a phone call by a dr to see if they need to see you. Stop lying they're "specialist trained" they're not. Ours are paid a basic admin and clerical grade NOT medical.

They expect you to pick up within two rings. You to be sat a home in privacy to take the call anytime between when you call and 6:30pm that day, or even the following day "if they don't get around to it".

It's unacceptable to tell someone with tonsilitis to phone back for triage when they cannot speak or breathe, because then and only then does this program consider it to be emergency enough to be seen, before then you can self treat. What would have been sorted in my routine twice a month appointments for my complex medical needs in two minutes never got treated by them as I wasn't allowed access until I'd need to be admitted on iv antibitotics and ended up buying, illegally, them online because I was desperate.

People have died doing what I did. How many more must die? It's totally unacceptable. All because a dreadful computer program says no?!

I've diabetes and a purple leg covered in blisters and ulcers that aren't healing. Not allowed an appointment.

I defended my surgery until 18 months ago, but no longer.

@AnneElliott

For those asking for solutions they way my previous surgery worked was quite good.

They allowed pre booked appointments for routine or regular matters and they were for the afternoon and the evening.

The morning appointments were turn up and wait - and they started at 8am but you could queue outside as early as you wanted to. There were 3 Drs and yuu were generally seen quite quickly unless you only wanted to see a specific one. So although there was a wait, you'd definitely be seen by 12 noon. So you could pick the day that you didn't work, or actually book leave in advance with your job and just turn up and wait. I often turned up at 7:30 and was number 2/2 in the queue and was seen and on my way to work at 8:15am.

That's exactly how my old surgery worked, and yes, it worked brilliantly.

I have but it seems a bit insensitive when the issue is that people can’t get through to their GP due to the level of calls. And then taking up GP time only to establish it was the wrong practice.

But then as I said upthread the number of people who cheerfully admitted to wasting NHS time with with PFBs was actually sad

NHS England means national health service across England ONLY.

Many people make the mistake of thinking it's the same as NHS Wales for example, it's not. They're VERY different businesses.

I do wish NHS England stopped inviting me for a cervical smear. I'm post hysterectomy, I don't have a cervix. My GP surgery knows not to chase me up but it seems NHS England have noone to contact to ask them to stop the time and money wasted on these letters. I get them about 3-4 times a year. I know it's a minor complaint and is at best mildly irritating but still, all these things add up. If they had a bit on the letter where it said contact us to unsubscribe or whatever it would be fine.

@MrsAvocet I agree, so much of the NHS is illogical and inefficient, but they don't seem to care. When my OH started chemo, it was at a different hospital and the consultant said that a covid test was needed a couple of days beforehand. Fair enough, I asked if I needed one too as I'd be going along - the consultant didn't know and phoned through to ask - to be told, no, only the patient. So OH had a covid test, I didn't. We both went to the oncology dept, both sat in the room with the nurse going through the formalities, paperwork, etc., both sat in the treatment room whilst the chemo was being given, etc. How illogical is that when I was there without a covid test. For the next appointment, told that neither of us needed a covid test, despite it being the same hospital, same dept, same room, same treatment. I know that's just one small thing, but it just shows how there's no logic, no joined up thinking, no consistency.

Not what you are asking.....I went private for menopause and transferred to my GP when the HRT was well established and that was all done over the phone (she had the clinic letters, etc)

GP surgeries in the UK in 2021 are not really the best place for peri-menopausal women. There are so many places to properly direct the rage.