GP sheltering since covid running London marathon

[justasking111]

OH raging that our GP working from home since March last year is running the London marathon today is he being unreasonable. He's spitting feathers here. This is the senior partner owner of the building practice

Being outside is a very small risk. Most people know this by now.

I'm starting to think that pharmacists might have to be paid to take some GP work on if things are so dangerous for them still. They worked through the pandemic and dentists have been in small rooms after lockdown 1.0 too.

YANBU Op. People are dying because they aren't getting access to GPs.

It's an absolute disgrace.

@KaleJuicer

Anyone likening the London marathon to a nice breezy jog outdoors obviously hasn’t seen the sheer MASSES of people shoulder to shoulder for half an hour before they start. I spent an hour at mile 8 this morning and the runners were still rammed close together at that stage.

I've been in the Tower Hill area on marathon day and it's like Christmas Eve- jam packed with people. It's not a breezy park run round a firld and if the GP is taking public transport as well then he is being hypocritical since most people aren't masked on the tubes and buses

*Spoiler
I'll bet he's been into Sainsbury's a few times too while wfh.
Bastard.

Yanbu.
People saying "but risk outside is small". The person isn't just randomly in a park but in a massive crowd of runners...

Yy to person mentioning pharmacists.

GPS got responsibility for CEV and over 80 s jabs , but not for the bulk of it. Government decided that. They have always done the flu jabs so have a system in place.
How does your husband know that the GP worked from home every single day and didn’t ever do consultations or home visits. I have a friend who’s a GP. She mainly worked from home, but did home visits and some face to face consultations. No one but her and the patient would know that.
GPS were instructed about how to manage consultations by health authorities. They don’t make all the decisions.

Yes he is being unreasonable to make assumptions like this. At the practice where I was working one of the partners was shielding so hasn’t seen anyone face to face since last year. Those of us who aren’t clinically vulnerable have been doing the face to face, while he triages via the phone, does lots of the prescription reviews etc. He is working extremely hard, just not seeing face to face. I prefer face to face so suits me. This may be similar to your GP.

@AnnaMagnani

I find it quite curious that a GP is CEV anyway, must be a generally quite an uneasy profession, covid aside

Loads of people who had been quite happily living their lives suddenly got told they were CEV. I'm a doctor and only avoided being CEV by a whisker.

There are lots of CEV people out there who look fit and healthy unless you happen to know their personal medical history.

Me too. Also a doctor, also working without any issue until early in the pandemic when I was told I couldn’t.

@ReeseWitherfork are you saying that only able-bodied people should ever work in healthcare? And if any healthcare worker becomes unwell or disabled they should stop working?

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/02/i-used-to-love-being-a-gp-now-i-feel-useless-scarred-for-life-fears-as-staff-quit-after-abuse

Sweet… another ‘let’s bash GP’s’ thread.

@NotAnotherAlias crikey, no, not at all. I just find the situation curious... Finding the balance between utilising that person's skills and expertise while also keeping them safe. I can't imagine that's only an issue during covid.

I’ve had a letter ending shielding (I’m CEV).

I would think that being in a crowd full of heavy-breathing, sweating, spitting runners is a high-risk activity, tbh. I think the GP is a hypocrite.

[quote ReeseWitherfork]@NotAnotherAlias crikey, no, not at all. I just find the situation curious... Finding the balance between utilising that person's skills and expertise while also keeping them safe. I can't imagine that's only an issue during covid.[/quote]
Thanks for clarifying. It’s incredibly frustrating to be CEV, still be considered too high risk to do my old face to face work (which would involve seeing COVID patients) and still be stuck living and working from home for the past 18 months.

Risk assessment is a little different because COVID has been a huge unknown. That said, in the past we’ve probably underestimated the risk to vulnerable healthcare professionals of seasonal illness perhaps because we (and by that I mean the system) have become a little complacent about it over the years.

Incidentally, to @alterego123 who reckons CEV GPs are nipping out to restaurants etc, I can count on my fingers the number of times I’ve been indoors in a public place since the pandemic started and these were all healthcare facilities where I was attending as a patient. I’ve seen friends/family on three occasions in all that time, every time outdoors only. Sorry to burst your bubble that CEV healthcare workers are hypocrites.

Tell your husband to get a life

Dunno but I do find it extraordinary that so many health professionals continue to wfh and not do any fwf appointments. I don't understand why they think it's OK for supermarket staff, bus drivers, pharmacists, etc to work but not them. Perhaps they are more speshul.

DD's ADHD nurse takes the biscuit. It's too unsafe for him to see her but not too unsafe for a pharmacist to take her blood pressure to report to him .

Rafts of the NHS have done themselves no favours during this pandemic

GP’s have worked throughout the pandemic as well and it has been some of the longest days I have ever worked
The rhetoric that because people are finding it hard to make appts means that their GP is doing nothing is unhelpful and untrue

Numbers of GP ‘s have fallen over last 10 years whilst the population size have risen. It is nigh on impossible to replace GP’s once they retire which has lead to the current situation
NHS England and the government told GP to work remotely and only see f2f if needed after assessment. The GP standard operating procedures were changed by the government to reflect this so actually GP’s were doing what they were asked to do.
Increasingly now we have more requests for remote appts as some patients prefer them and we didn’t have the technology before the pandemic
GPS in the last months have provided approx 38 000 000 appointments of which 16 000 000 were face to face
For comparison roughly 2 000 000 people are seen in a and e each month and outpatients appt around 9 000 000 but i can’t find the data on what percentage of these were face to face as predominantly where safe they’re remote.
These figures are NHS digital

The failure of primary care to provide timely appts is NOT a failure of individual GP’s but a failure of the government to sustain funding and numbers within primary care but are looking to blame it directly on primary care not their policies and they’re doing a very good smear campaign

I think it is entirely reasonable to expect healthcare appointments within 24 hours for urgent non emergency and within a few days for non urgent in a first world country but the failure for people to get this is not the practices fault in the most part.
There are clear differences between practices as noted on here in the past. Sometimes though that’s the difference between a well staffed practice and an under staffed one. I know near us there is a large practice which lost just under half of its doctors over last 2 years and due to this it is a huge struggle for patients to be seen ,but not because the doctors left are on the golf course! Even the best management cannot make up for lack of bums on seats.
I don’t know one GP who would want patients to have to wait for medical attention and most of us would prefer to work in an environment like France where patient can be seen same or next day .

Complain to MPs

Shielding from Covid doesn't necessarily mean that you can't run a marathon. Ir means that you are vulnerable to infection, for reasons that may have absolutely nothing to do with your physical ability to run. And the infection risk is considerably lower outdoors doing a marathon than indoors, exposed to patients who may have all sorts of germs that they are spreading, including Covid if pre-symptomatic or with not absolutely typical symptoms. Give him a break; you don't get put in the shielding category that easily.

I thought the shielding programme had ended ?

I'm getting sick to the back teeth of hearing people moan on about not getting F2F appointments. The majority of the time, they aren't even needed! If your presence is required, perhaps for a BP check or bloods then you can go in and see the nurse.

I'd much rather stay in and wait for a call than go and sit in a waiting room full of dirty buggers who don't cover their mouths when they cough.

Let's remember we are also bloody lucky to have the NHS. Imagine if we were in the USA! Even the Irish have to pay a small fee to see the doc, don't they?

@RosesAndHellebores

Dunno but I do find it extraordinary that so many health professionals continue to wfh and not do any fwf appointments. I don't understand why they think it's OK for supermarket staff, bus drivers, pharmacists, etc to work but not them. Perhaps they are more speshul.

DD's ADHD nurse takes the biscuit. It's too unsafe for him to see her but not too unsafe for a pharmacist to take her blood pressure to report to him .

Rafts of the NHS have done themselves no favours during this pandemic

The point is healthcare workers were, and still are, asked to manage patients known to be unwell with COVID with inadequate PPE. This means it’s unsafe for some staff members to work face to face as their risk of death was either suspected (before we had data to back it up) or is known to be too high. The employer has a responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work Act to ensure reasonable measures are in place to ensure staff safety, of which redeployment to non-patient facing roles was one.

It’s a legal requirement for employers to keep their workers safe. It’s not staff members being precious or thinking they’re special. If your employer isn’t keeping you safe, you need to take it up with them and ask them to demonstrate they are following the law.

People are dying because they aren't getting access to GPs.

But that isn't because of a few GPs who are shielding. It's mainly because there aren't enough GPs.

DD's ADHD nurse takes the biscuit. It's too unsafe for him to see her
Other than BP, what physical observations actually need to be made once a person has an ADHD diagnosis?

I'm getting sick to the back teeth of hearing people moan on about not getting F2F appointments.

I've read stories on here about people being denied face to face to check lumps. They've been told to send a photo of the lump but make it not indecent when the lump is in the breast.

I'm going to hazard a guess that neither you nor your DH has got a fucking clue what your GP has been doing since the start of the pandemic.