To think GPs should do their job

[Wotnokids]

Just heard the news that £250million is to be made available to GPs to 'increase the amount of face to face appointments'. AIBU to think this is just extra cash for doing their job?

@mbosnz

Holy heck. My daughter is wanting to go into medicine. I've tried to talk her out of it. Gulp.

Meanwhile, in IT land, DH is doing 50-60 hours per week, and is getting significantly over the £100, 000 figure thrown out to lure the jealous carpings. . .

Medicine is great - just not in this country.

If my children were at the correct age and were so inclined I'd honestly do everything in my power to stop them from working on the NHS. Genuinely.

Ditto.
I've encouraged my DC not to go into healthcare.

Buy health insurance, folks!

Daughter has ever been one to choose the most challenging path. I think her philosophy is that if she can survive doing her time in the NHS, she can survive anything. Which may be true. . . but what if she can't?!

And this should be seriously ringing alarm bells amongst those that think that the answer is ' provide more GP's'. Where's the incentive for people to put in the hours, the work, the stress, the trauma, the MONEY to train in medicine here, in the UK?

I've been steering my kids clear, it doesn't look like they'll go for medicine thank goodness!

Daughter has ever been one to choose the most challenging path. I think her philosophy is that if she can survive doing her time in the NHS, she can survive anything. Which may be true. . . but what if she can't?!

The NHS is great for learning and 'throwing people in at the deep end.' She'll come out having learned loads. So keep the faith. My advice would be for her to do hospital HCA work whilst doing her medical degree (or before) if she can.

Thank you so much for that. She's wanted to do medicine since she was 12, she's incredibly driven. Um, what's HCA work?!

One thing I will say, she's a right cynical little mare, and she has very few illusions. If she were an animal, she'd be a donkey, or an ass, I reckon.

Haha. Sounds like she'll do well in a hospital then, being determined and stubborn.
HCA-healthcare assistant. Some med and (lots of) nursing students do bank HCA work at hospitals whilst studying when time permits. Gives great insight to life on a ward and she can develop skills.

Welcome to Mumsnet @Wotnokids

I'm with OP. There's many people under pressure in a much lower paid job. For example a care home. You have people complaining and dead lines too.

Anyway it's not a competition but I think people are fed up of being fobbed off over the phone!

Who is being robbed off over the phone?

There are some great links on this thread (like this one www.somersetlmc.co.uk/guidance ) Thank you so much, everyone.

I’ve been seen twice this week F2F in my surgery. Today I called at 0930 to ask to see a Dr or Nurse (wasn’t sure who would be more appropriate) and was offered a slot at 1230. When I arrived there was an adult man with I assumed his mother who walked in ahead of me with a leg injury wanting a nurse to look at his injury that had just happened…they wouldn’t listen to the receptionist who was telling them that they needed A&E or a walk in centre. “It will just take a minute “ they insisted. They got their way and were seen by a nurse who dressed the wound. Another woman stood at the reception ordering her repeat prescription (why? When there is the NHS app) insisting that she was always given a repeat of an OTC painkiller as well as her anxiety meds. Gawd knows how the staff remained so patient as she insisted that it was on repeat. She saw one of the doctors walking through reception and shouted him over insisting that he agree with her about her mythical repeat prescription. She was eventually persuaded that she needed a medication review and a telephone appointment was made. Several others came into reception to request prescriptions. Total waste of time as these can be requested on the app. They were all under 50 and probably closer to 30 so certainly would have had smart phones. I was there for about 30 minutes in the waiting room and in the nurses room and I was exhausted by how hectic it was. Lord knows how the staff cope with that day in and day out

@Pea22ches

I'm with OP. There's many people under pressure in a much lower paid job. For example a care home. You have people complaining and dead lines too.

Anyway it's not a competition but I think people are fed up of being fobbed off over the phone!

Yeah, many people are under immense pressure but unless they dealing with other people's health and are, ultimately, responsible for said health, it really isn't the same type of burden or stress. I've worked in a care home---any issues with a patient's health I deferred to 999 (if emergency) or GP. My job was to monitor and escalate in need of deterioration-I was not required to diagnose or solve the problem and I was glad the buck didn't stop with me. Regarding the phone issue, that really is due to demand for appointments greatly exceeding resources (staff, premises, equipt) available and there seems to be a massive disparity (in the phone issue) between practices/area.

Overall, take it up with the govt.

@FAD2016 did these people know how the NHS app is working and what you can do with it?

Pre covid, my surgery was using a different system which was made redundant with covid. You could book appointment, look at your test results etc…
I assumed this had just disappeared with covid until I read on here that the nhs app had basically replace the old system for most the stuff. But I haven’t seen any article, any information at the surgery (posters etc…) about it. How can we then expect people to just know???

Maybe the first step is to do a campaign of information before telling everyone they are time wasters.

Well we knew this was going to happen. Drs told us this about 5 years ago. They are working - to excess of 100 hours a week with some, covering multiple surgeries.

Everyone on here makes things a race to the bottom about how hard they have it and this is why we have ignored this for so long. When Drs said they were having it tough, everyone chirped up and said so do I. Then they said we will lose lots of Drs - many said well go and do another job then.

So they have done.....reap what you sow. You made this by ignoring them. Suck it up.

@DamnUserName21 well yes they have more stress to an extent BUT they are getting paid a LOT more... GPS send a lot of things to hospitals for a start. Nurses have a lot of responsibility for a lot less money too. Like I said it's not a hierarchy thing. I'm sticking with my opinion.

@TravelLost my surgery used to promote the Patient Access app and certainly urged me to register on it so I can only assume that other patients would have received the same information I did. I think I downloaded the NH S app following a text from the surgery but I agree that we need a national advertising campaign to highlight the benefits.
But I suppose the point if my post was to highlight the half hour slice if their day that I witnessed. Utterly hectic face to face patient access a lot of which was either not GP surgery business or could have been dealt more efficiently if the patients would cooperate. On of the most depressing things is the poster that is always displayed showing how many ‘missed’ appointments there were in the previous calendar month. I accept that perhaps I have been lucky at my surgery but I can’t help think that a lot of the problems is the way we use our health services.

@sst1234

It’s the non clinical staff needs to be cut. In any GP practice, you can usually see 2 or 3 receptionists out front and few other non clinical staff hanging around in the back office. And the you still get the infamous nasty receptionist treatment, but that’s another show. This work should be automated, admin staff are taking up too much resource.

Let's see you get your appointments, repeat prescriptions, insurance reports, discharge summaries added to your records, consultant letters filed, blood test results given without us....

On the subject of the Patient Access app, do you think we'll ever be able to book appointments through it again, as we used to?

It's absolute misery for the non clinical staff in GP surgeries at the moment. They are constantly abused and most are on terrible wages. My partner just today was called an 'f-ing c' by a patient. It's a daily occurrence at his place. The triage system for appointments makes total sense to me, if sensibly applied.

How possible would it be to have nurses doing the triage instead of the receptionists?

Surely junior nurses aren't paid much more than minimum wage, are they? So why not have nurses instead of unqualified people?

I would love it they could Chuck us a few extra quid to train, employ and retain a few more midwives. Pretty desperate times 😭

"How possible would it be to have nurses doing the triage instead of the receptionists?"

We don't triage. We take the information down and put it into the booking. Got a sick child with a high temperature you've been up all night with? Wouldn't you want the doctor to be ringing you first? Because that's what they do. Because if you tell us we can tell the doctor and they can get you down to be seen.

It's not rocket science what we do. I'm so sick of hearing that we somehow decide how the doctor spends their time. When you're looking at an ever growing appointment book. Maybe you've added four or five times to the end. Because Mrs Smiths probably got cellulitis. Because she's told me the receptionist who knows fuck all that her legs are red, hot and hard. That Mrs Brown has got a urine infection. God they're fucking horrible. Bring a sample down. We will get the nurse to test it and send off to the lab.

But I'm sorry. If the list has been added to extensively. You might have to wait for a call for that niggling issue that's been bothering you for weeks. Of course it needs a call back. But the urgent stuff has to be done. And it's shit. We know. But the GP workload is massive. We don't gatekeep. We try to facilitate and advocate.

But of course. We are not medically trained. It would make much more sense to get a qualified nurse to answer the phones. That's definitely the best use of their time

@Awalkintime

Well we knew this was going to happen. Drs told us this about 5 years ago. They are working - to excess of 100 hours a week with some, covering multiple surgeries.

Everyone on here makes things a race to the bottom about how hard they have it and this is why we have ignored this for so long. When Drs said they were having it tough, everyone chirped up and said so do I. Then they said we will lose lots of Drs - many said well go and do another job then.

So they have done.....reap what you sow. You made this by ignoring them. Suck it up.

Well said.