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?

Before the pandemic I worked at a doctor's surgery.
Even 3 years ago it was very difficult to get doctors wanting to work as a GP.
It's not like years ago being a family doctor. Now each GP can have up to 2000
patients on the books sometimes more.
My surgery had 1 full time, 3 part time and there was 7189 patients.
You couldn't even find locums to help.

@Neron

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.

I think that some people are experiencing shocking service. I am seeing it now with my FIL. I also think people can get amazing support. I’ve just seeing that for myself this week.

But you never hear about what goes well.
And you certainly don’t hear about the REAL reason why people are nit supported the way they should. When thee isn’t enough doctors, nurses etc…. (So fir example they have to cancel chemotherapy because they just can’t do that). When you are asking so much from doctors and nurses that they are in their knees. Then they make mistakes. People are nit referred as quickly as they should. People die.

But it’s nit the fault if GP as people. The issue is the whole of the system that has been putbunder extreme pressure when they were struggling to cope in the first place.

YABU

I would never blame hard working GP's for the governments lack of funding.

[quote Mummydoctor]@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.[/quote]
It’s a good question @Mummydoctor.

All iver MN you have calls to add flexible and part time working. People want to wfh and see that as right.

But gid forbid that aGP would want to make choice for themselves and actually decide to work ‘part time’ etc….

@Mummydoctor I’m with you! I’m ltft in hospital, but stupidly didn’t wait till after training for kids. The daily mail raging at part time doctors annoys me. Increasing % of graduate medics are female, this is going to be a workforce issue into the future. Why isn’t medicine as attractive to men anymore I wonder?

GPS are doing their jobs, they're also leaving in droves. The Daily Mail whipping up hatred has been the last straw for many. Be careful what you wish for

A lot of British people have a weird attitude to public sector workers, presumably thanks to the incessant mantra of the right wing dominated media the last 3/4 decades.

Makes me think of this stat: “Statistics published by the DfE reveal that of teachers who qualified in 2014, just 67.4 per cent were still in service after five years in 2019”.

And yet somehow the answer to shortages and recruitment issues of GPs and teachers is just lecturing.

The GP service is too often not good enough. But that's the fault of successive governments and the crap conditions GPs work under, not the GPs themselves.

The extra funding is not for individual GPs, but for the practice to fund getting a locum in or perhaps a paramedic/physio to take on some work so that the GP can see more patients face to face.

Exactly @TravelLost
People want women to work full time, and look after their kids full time. And chastise them for putting them in someone else’s care while they have a career. We can never win. The DM waging war on part time medics is a war against female workers.

@1990s
I'm asking questions on a forum (that's what they are for) calm yourself down before you make yourself ill. Xxx

You can push all the cash at training GPs you like, very few of us junior doctors will do it because it's a thankless slog which for the last year (and in my opinion for the foreseeable future) will include taking constant abuse and ridicule from members of the public who don't know what they're talking about and think that a GP 'day' is anything less than 14 hours, and carries more responsibility and unmeetable expectation than any one human should have to manage.
TLDR no one wants to be a GP because it's shit and you can earn the same money in hospital.

@Moraxella I completely agree. The medical schools are increasingly taking female students (which they should if done on merit) but where is the workforce planning? Who’s responsibility is that I wonder? 🤔

Just like the government have know for years that something like 1/3 of the GP workforce was due to retire - again complete lack of planning…see the pattern anyone??

Tories slash and burn anything NHS or public sector.

Sadly this government has played a blinder.
No wonder with the ignorance of the electorate.
Some practices will have handled patient care better than others but there is no way all patients could routinely be seen face to face without a triaging system just because that's what they want.

The money isn’t going to go into the pocket of GPs, it will go into practice management of increased pressure on services. It goes to practices not individuals. There is an increasing scarcity of GPs, and it will only get worse so anyone moaning about them should be aware they are contributing to the inevitable collapse of the whole system. You’ll miss them when they’re gone!

@brittleheadgirl

My job is 'endlessly exhausting' I'm an early years teacher, in a large, very diverse inner city school. I'm paid at least, half maybe a third what a gp earns. The public are tired of gps still not returning to 'normal' and still not offering face to face appointments. I'm not surprised that people are angry. I like many have worked face to face throughout the pandemic and for a large part of it I was unvaccinated too.

The irony of this.

It’s not so long ago teachers were being heavily criticised in the media for teaching remotely and concerns on we their health.

Look how they lied about teachers, you think they aren’t lying about GPs too?

In the past ten years this country just points fingers at every one but those who have the power to make change.

And we all suffer for that.

I'll post this again as I do on all these threads

The constant bashing of GPs by the Daily Mail and the media in general is horrific. I know of several who are about to leave general practice because of the inhuman demands made upon them. We need a health minister who has some medical knowledge, understands the pressures and just doesn't spout provocative headlines to appease the masses.

@tealandteal

The extra funding is not for individual GPs, but for the practice to fund getting a locum in or perhaps a paramedic/physio to take on some work so that the GP can see more patients face to face.

I’m actually wondering what they will do with that money tbh.

If there are thousands of GP missing, where can you find a locum?
If paramedics are stretched to the limit, where can you find more paramedics to work in go surgeries?

Putting money in is a good thing (even though i suspect this is just a drop in the ocean), but I’m wondering where all those people are going to magically appear from

@southcarolina, do you know that some newspapers managed to say that the shortage of HGV drivers was ALSO the GP fault ?

My GP surgery is not great, they weren't pre pandemic either, but that's probably because it covers a geographically really large area and there's 3 GPs and a practice nurse. It's a rural area, but socially pretty deprived with towns and villages etc.
Is it frustrating when I've got my employer breathing down my neck for a sick note? Yes.
Is it frustrating when I need treatment or a referral for treatment and I can't even get through on the phone? Yes.
But we're all aware that funding has been cut in the NHS, yet due to a little virus doing the rounds and a big upsurge in mental illness (not to mention long covid, and everything else that people get sick with) need has increased. How can any service be run effectively on less resources and more demands? It doesn't matter how hard the people who deliver that service work, or what they get paid, they can't bend time to create more and they don't stop needing things like sleep and down time.
Trying to ensure services are safe as can be where covid is concerned causes delays to that service, and if time is already at a premium, then phone consults are enabling more people to get some help sooner rather than none at all for an indefinite amount of time. But people are increasingly refusing to accept that things have, and have to, change to accommodate this. Refusing to accept that doesn't mean it still doesn't need to happen.

I feel like GPs are in a similar situation to many in healthcare, provide good service to fewer people, leaving many without a service at all, or more people a worse service but at least they're getting something.
If the NHS isn't going to be funded and managed properly, then we need to adjust expectations, but as it is they're just increasing.
GPs are not the ones deciding on funding or managing the service as a whole, they're trying to work with what they've got - the government are the ones deciding the funding and the management of it, and are quite likely people who've never touched a patient in their lives.
But while we keep up this argument that GPs are the ones at fault, nothing is going to change because the GPs can't change it, we're blaming the wrong people who are already under a lot of pressure and are (despite popular opinion) humans that don't just exist to treat our illnesses. Instead of demanding the people who can do something actually do it, we're adding that pressure to people who can't - and that's going to have the knock on effect of losing them from the service all together, which isn't going to improve things, rather the opposite.

Gps choose their jobs, so know the score.
So many people are being neglected, wrongly diagnosed and others die because of the system. How many people have to die before anything is done?
Not everyone can afford to go private.
It's just like the honours. People get honours for doing the job they are paid to.
We used to have one of the best practices there was. Now the local death rate is high.
Many people avoid ringing the drs as there is nothing to facilitate those with hearing lose, then should you get through (almost impossible ) you get a frosty receptionist who demands to know if you really need a dr and what is wrong. ( she has no triage training) if you have personal or mental health problems you certainly do not want to tell her.
I had to send photos last year and overheard a receptionist discuss it socially. I did nothing as dh said to leave it as he depends on the practice .
They were able to see patients prior to covid so why not now? Why extra money? To get a nice coffee machine and biscuits no doubt.

@Maverickess 🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

They were able to see patients prior to covid so why not now? Why extra money? To get a nice coffee machine and biscuits no doubt.

Assume that’s tongue in cheek, otherwise it’s the most stupid thing I’ve read in a time of reading very stupid things every day.

@Cryalot2 the job I trained to do isn’t what the job has become. I am a highly trained professional but I am also human, that’s what makes me a good GP.

I want to do the best by my patients. But I can’t do that with the current system. I am not complaining for me, I am unhappy with the service the government are funding/providing as my patients are suffering. If I also burn out and leave, who will advocate for my patients then?