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?

@Ciaram55 this might answer your question

www.gponline.com/gp-practices-delivering-1m-appointments-week-pre-pandemic-says-nhs-england/article/1711065

Don't many GPs not work 'full time'? The ones I know do 2.5 days per week but work very long hours on those days. Could the money be going to increase the days/hours they work? Not sure how typical that is though, I only know 2.

I’m sure I read/heard somewhere that the uk was already short of GPs before the pandemic so I’m guessing that the money will go towards training and employing new ones. Before approx February 2020 if I was to book an appointment with my GP that wasn’t an emergency one (so for that day) I’d be waiting 6-8 weeks, presumably because of being short staffed. This money will be plugging the massive gaps by the sound of it but as usual, it’s being worded in a way that paints GPs in a negative light. That’s what our government do and certain Tory leaning newspapers follow suit.

@Biancadelrioisback - some GP’s want to work part time, no different from other jobs, although part time for a GP would be full time in other jobs.

@Biancadelrioisback

Don't many GPs not work 'full time'? The ones I know do 2.5 days per week but work very long hours on those days. Could the money be going to increase the days/hours they work? Not sure how typical that is though, I only know 2.

Would the GPs you know want to/be able to work more hours?

@Ciaram55 there are more patients having more appointments and fewer doctors.
Also the pandemic has meant a huge proportion of patients are not being seen by secondary care in the way they usually would - longer waiting lists, delayed investigations, remote consultations with specialists - all make more work for GPs.
And it just takes longer to see people now - anyone with a fever or cough I am donning and doffing PPE, cleaning my room between patients, doing a telephone consultation first to see if it’s safe to manage them remotely.
Things were pretty bad in some practices before the pandemic due to lack of funding, lack of staff.

I'm a GP I'd love to go back to face to face.
I dealt with way less patients per day and used to work around 1-2 hours less each day.
Doing telephone and e-consulting means I deal with way higher numbers. I bring down around 50% of people I phone. I offer to see people with coughs and fevers who haven't bothered to do a covid test despite the fact that I'm approaching my third trimester.
I have also worked a variety of non skilled jobs when I was at university so can personally vouch that working long hours in catering is in no way the same as 12 hours of complex decision making in GP. I never used to wake up at 3am worrying that I'd forgotten to put something in the fridge when I worked in my previous catering jobs.
I work less than full time as I also have a toddler and earn less than half of the 100,000k figures floating about.

If your GP is terrible move surgeries or write a letter of complaint to the practice manager rather than claiming non of us are doing our jobs.

If we go back to face to face so people who want a sick note and a chat use up an appt there won't be any time or appts to see people who are sick or have more worrying symptoms. But we'll all be lazy and overpaid no matter how much we try to please some people.

Final thought - my friends who work in similarly skilled jobs in the private sector all get paid way more pro rata than I do with way better working conditions and half the student debt I have.

@Seashor

Have a go at doing their thanklessly exhausting job then come back and tell us.

Well there's clearly a massive disconnect. GPs saying they are seeing patients and are exhausted and patients saying they can't even get a telephone appointment.

You'd think they can't both be right but clearly some GPs are doing their job and others are not. It's not unreasonable for the latter category to be sorted out, whether by stick or carrot.

GPs working less days in general practice does not mean that they are spending the rest of the time on the golf course. They do other things. Like teaching or working in other health settings. Some might have families and home life commitments.

Their income as a GP is not nationally set. They are paid by their employers, which are GP organisations. These are mostly partnerships, large or small. Market forces can mean salaries are high in some areas. But that is a consequence of the government not training enough Doctors.

Pre pandemic far too many people where seen face to face by a doctors who didn’t need to be seen by a doctor.

@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?

We are getting this in Scotland. no it doesn't go in my pocket it is paying PARTLY towards a new GP we have managed to get so we can offer more appointments.

Yesterday out of 14 pre-booked patients in the morning I saw 9 face to face and arranged to bring another in next week.

I would open up to full face to face tomorrow...but we are being told we should be "making use of video and phone consultation where appropriate"

Also your immunosuppressed parent may not want to be in a waiting room with all the coughs and colds.

Also it takes me much longer to do a phone consultation than a face to face which is why we can't get through as many patients which is why you can't get an apt.

I wonder how many more times I can say that.

There will be some GPs out there avoiding face to face but we are seeing loads in ours.

Also dealing with 100 more patients a week than we were pre pandemic.

"Well there's clearly a massive disconnect. GPs saying they are seeing patients and are exhausted and patients saying they can't even get a telephone appointment."

Some areas have far fewer GP's per head than others and so those GP's are covering a larger number of patients - there is an interesting article about this on SKY news app at the moment.

Sounds horrendous. I'm a GP.

I am loving seeing my patients face to face. I miss the little chats we would have when putting on their coats or finding out what kids are doing when they leave school or how their courses are going. It is a very privileged job but it is a lot harder than when I started 30 years ago.

@lockdownmadnessdotcom I don’t fully understand the disconnect either.

However there are parts of the country and some surgeries which will have lost huge numbers of GPs and primary care staff. Some died in the pandemic, there were always a massive number who were due to retire (I’m sure their departure will have been hastened by the anti GP headlines currently circulating), and the government promised 6000 extra GPs never materialised (numbers have actually reduced further by 1500). In the meantime the population has risen and demand has gone through the roof.

@LunaTheCat

I am a GP. I get to work at 8 am and leave usually about 8pm. I see 30 people a day and do about 3-4 hrs paperwork. I have good bladder control as I have learnt to hold on. I have a 20 minute break for lunch. I am utterly, utterly exhausted. I love my patients, I consider my job an honour. I couldn’t work any harder if I wanted to.

Crazy sounds really inefficient. In Canada GPs see 40 patients a day and do it in 8-10 hour day, in a walk in clinic where there are no appointments and mostly very simple issues they do same patient load in 5-6 hours.

Maybe they need to reduce your admin/bureaucracy.

The Mail and government are hell bent on damaging primary care beyond repair and people are just buying into the bullshit. Why don’t people think for themselves??
I agree about primary care being damaged, there isn't enough staff whether that be at GP surgeries or in hospitals or care homes. All comes down to money, and yes the government are to blame.

Equally, I don't think it is all the media stirring. Opinions are formed based on what treatment people have received. I have a somewhat skewed, but low opinion of some medical professionals, based on the absolute shocking behaviour, dismissal and disregard of multiple members of my family, who turned out to be very ill, and which cost some of them their lives. I'm not alone in that. All of these people were dismissed by multiple and different health professionals, so it's not a case of seeing the same people, with some before and during covid.

Also there may be the odd GP getting 100k but they will be the ones who are working 5 days a week (minimum 60-70 hours), with other paid roles and may have dispensing pharmacies which they will get a share from.

I choose to work three days per week in the surgery (36 hours) as I have a young family, have been doing extra covid vaccine clinics and contraception clinics, as well as carrying out appraisals on other GPs and I get nowhere near that amount.

@brittleheadgirl
GPs worked face to face during covid too. The increasing demand means that they have to triage who they can see in a limited no. of appointments (e.g. choosing 16 people to see f2f out of 100 phoning in that morning for an appointment). If you want them to see everyone face to face the waiting list will get longer.

There’s a large contingent of female GPs who probably can’t find the childcare to work full time and so are part time. There aren’t many nurseries who will do 7am til 9pm at night five days a week.

@Neron I’m sorry to hear of your family member’s poor experiences. The system is by no means perfect - it isn’t funded to be unfortunately. And equally there will likely be individuals who don’t do their job properly or where genuine errors occur. But, that isn’t most peoples experience.

Most patients are satisfied with the care they receive. I’ll try and attach the latest GP survey for info. Certainly all the patients I have spoke to, seen or visited this week have made a point to thank me for my care.

Where are all the GP’s promised by Jeremy Hunt? He said there would be 000’s recruited. As usual the government promising what they can’t deliver and then blaming it on the existing GP’s.

They are and always have done their jobs.

They don’t PERSONALLY decide what the rules are re seeing patients, wearing masks etc… if you have an issue with that, take it to the people who make the decisions there (GMC, NHS, I’m not even sure)

And then come back when you are happy to be paid for 8 hours of work in the day and actually do 12 or 14.

Btw you could have a go at the people at the head if each medical centre. Because they are the ones to organise the whole of the medical centre. And seeing the difference between the really good ones and the crap ones, I’d say that those managers have a lot to say about the whole end result too.

And the whole 10 years of reductions in budget etc… the fact there are 30.000 GP missing etc… have a go at the government for not taking care if the NHS. Because covid has only hasten the whole ‘the nhs is on its knees and not fit for purpose’ work they’ve been doing since getting in power.

I have enough of the GP bashing. Don’t people realise that the government has just created some scapegoats again to avoid facing to their responsibilities??

important though your role is you aren’t making life or death decisions. Carers do. And they do very long hours. All for minimum wage. I also know 3 carers who've had to stop caring due to receiving no help with medical issues meaning it has deteriorated beyond repair.

@Mummydoctor

I am a GP. I AM doing my job as best as I can with the resources I have been given by the government with HUGE rise in demand.

I am also currently doing the job of multiple others - hospitals who haven’t sent patients home with their medication or sick notes after admission, managing patients who are on massive waiting lists and are struggling, supporting those with mental health problems who can’t get seen by mental health services in any timely fashion, social services - trying to pick up the pieces when elderly people don’t have the care they need provided at home/care homes because they don’t have the staff.

All while being short staffed due to covid and being leaving the jobs in droves.

The Mail and government are hell bent on damaging primary care beyond repair and people are just buying into the bullshit. Why don’t people think for themselves??! Headlines like we’ve had the last few weeks is just driving more and more of us to leave. For this first time in 15 years I have been exhausted to the point of wanting to jack it all in. And I still might. There are a whole load of other GPs who will and have done just that. What do you think will happen then?

Exactly!

It’s much easier for the government via The Mail to shift the blame and responsibility to others rather than dealing with the situation themselves and making our country a better place to live.
Instead the divide us all up so we fight with each other!

Our gp surgery is now owned by an American company and they have no limit on the number of patients they will accept so they have more than the doctors can actually deal with. This is great for the company as they get government money per head, but not so good for the doctor or patient but of course that doesn’t affect either government or shareholders….

We all need to support each other, more than ever, and not believe all the crap in the papers. It’s not a race to the bottom as to who works hardest or is paid least for what they do.

I am so sick of these GP bashing threads! My GP phoned me the other night at 7.30pm, even though the surgery shuts at 6pm! @Wotnokids seriously what an awful thread.

Well there's clearly a massive disconnect. GPs saying they are seeing patients and are exhausted and patients saying they can't even get a telephone appointment.

You'd think they can't both be right but clearly some GPs are doing their job and others are not. It's not unreasonable for the latter category to be sorted out, whether by stick or carrot.

I don’t think that’s any disconnect or that it means that any GP isn’t doing their job properly. It’s perfectly consistent with the problem of demand outstripping supply. Just like you’d get shit service in a restaurant at lunchtime on a Saturday with one waiter serving 30 tables. It doesn’t mean the waiter isn’t pulling his weight.

@Moraxella and as one of these female GPs who wanted to be a doctor since 9 yrs old, worked bloody hard throughout school, uni and junior jobs and waited until I’d finished all my training before starting a family, why shouldn’t I be able to choose to work less than 5 days a week. I don’t like to call it part time because I work full time hours (36-38hours) per week compressed into three (very long) days so I have time to see my family, appraise other GPs (another paid job which someone has to do) or I pick up extra work in vaccine/contraception clinics. This is on top of helping to manage the partnership.