To think NHS GPS will never go back to "normal"

[CakeIsNotALuxury]

This morning I rang my doctors to make an appointment. I told them I was having chest pains and pain in my right arm like squeezing pains. I've also been very faint and dizzy. The pain is bloody horrific. I have never felt as unwell as this.
I have suspected heart problems but waiting on a referral. I was told they'd ring me.

It's now 3pm and no phone call. AIBU to be pissed off? I rang and spoke to the receptionist who said the GP isnt ringing in order of appointments and is doing it randomly. My chest feels even worse than this morning and i have bad breathlessness and feel very tired.

I understand they are over worked, but surely it shouldn't be this hard to talk to a GP?

So sorry to hear that @CakeIsNotALuxury hopefully not.

For those saying gp surgeries can't carry out ecg, some most definitely can. I had one at my gps while waiting on an ambulance with similar symptoms.

So glad you are in the right place and being helped.

NHS GPs are overworked, demoralized and being screwed horribly with pension tax (a 'special' extra tax unique to small proportion of the population) - leading to early retirement/reduced hours (and more under-capacity). They're doing their best eg using virtual consultations to increase productivity.

If you want a better service - options - vote Labour to increase your taxes or pay for a private GP. Or perhaps move to Norway or a country which spends more on healthcare.

And get yourself to ED - hopefully just a panic attack, but important to check it's nothing serious !

DOI - not a GP.

Sorry to hear that @CakeIsNotALuxury, what a horrible diagnosis to be presented with unexpectedly.

I am categorically not a medic, but I used to work with heart failure nurses and they were one of the nicest group of people I’ve come across, should your diagnosis be confirmed I hope you have a good team behind you. It’s an overwhelming diagnosis but honestly there’s so much support and management options available you don’t need to face it alone.

Best wishes

@TheCanyon

So sorry to hear that *@CakeIsNotALuxury* hopefully not.

For those saying gp surgeries can't carry out ecg, some most definitely can. I had one at my gps while waiting on an ambulance with similar symptoms.

Surgeries can do an ECG (when staff are available to do it) They can also do bloods but will take at least 24 hours to get results. The problem is that you can't reliably exclude coronary chest pain (angina/heart attack) unless you have BOTH a clear ECG and negative troponin blood test. Therefore the only real safe option if you have reasonable suspicion of this is to go to ED where you'll get an immediate ECG and blood results back in an hour or 2. ED is also safer because if you do become significantly unwell you have more advanced rescuscitation equipment and often cardiac catheter labs to perform procedures such as stenting. It always baffles me that people 'don't want to waste GP time' but don't recognise that ED is sometimes the safer place to be and that GP are neither commisioned or resourced to provide emergency treatment and have far too much work on themselves to be trying to provide it

PS hope you're ok OP and hope you can get answers quickly x

@CakeIsNotALuxury

I'm at the hospital. They suspect I have heart failure.

Been admitted over the weekend so they can run tests. Thank you for giving me a kick up the arse to go. If I had listened to my GP I wouldn't of known.

Sorry to hear that but thank goodness you went!

Poor you

I'm glad you're now in the right place to get help and support.

Our gp frequently miss things. The nurses are good. Hospital doctors just seem more on the ball.

Their the only gp practice in our area too, the next village won’t take us.

Strange thread title for the content.

I'm also surprised you weren't told to attend a&e.

How are you op? Any more news

@CakeIsNotALuxury

I'm at the hospital. They suspect I have heart failure.

Been admitted over the weekend so they can run tests. Thank you for giving me a kick up the arse to go. If I had listened to my GP I wouldn't of known.

How would you not have known those symptoms = heart problems = a&e? You said yourself you weren’t going to hospital because you have a phobia which suggests you know hospital was the appropriate place

I think the issue here is the variability of how changes to systems and appointments have been implemented. In some cases it seems to be working OK and in others it's a disaster. Personally, I was happy with the system before, but I'm even happier now. My surgery seems to be triaging effectively over the telephone. The phone appointments I've had with my GP worked really well and they emailed me afterwards with a couple of links to articles to read about my issue. It saved me time because I didn't have to travel to the surgery and hang around waiting for my appointment. I totally get that other surgeries are not working as well though and that is unacceptable. I would add that when I phoned the surgery to say that I had found a lump in my breast, they didn't hang about and I saw my GP that afternoon, so it can be done. It did turn out to be breast cancer and my hospital appointments have been a mix of in the hospital and over the phone. Obviously, when I have needed scans, surgery or chemo etc, then I've gone into the hospital, but discussions with breast care nurses, the oncologist and my MacMillan nurse have been phone based. I like this because its a bit of a trek into hospital so it saves me time. I also rather enjoyed my, quite frankly dishy, oncologist forgetting he was talking to a patient and saying 'Bye, love you' at the end of one of his phone calls! . I think there is too much variation with how new ways of working are being implemented though, its too much of a geographical lottery. I also think there needs to be a national working party type of thing to look at how to tackle this and how to standardise approaches more. I also think that no politicians should be allowed anywhere near this.

@CakeIsNotALuxury

I'm at the hospital. They suspect I have heart failure.

Been admitted over the weekend so they can run tests. Thank you for giving me a kick up the arse to go. If I had listened to my GP I wouldn't of known.

So sorry to hear this, OP. Glad you got yourself to the hospital.

They won’t go back to the old normal because the new normal is too convenient.
Like lots of public sector ‘services’ where Covid was a useful excuse to reduce the service for the jobsworths…

@JangolinaPitt

They won’t go back to the old normal because the new normal is too convenient. Like lots of public sector ‘services’ where Covid was a useful excuse to reduce the service for the jobsworths…

It's not convenient or enjoyable at all. It's NECESSARY. This is what the public don't understand

@BattenbergdowntheHatches

Being screwed horribly with pension tax (a 'special' extra tax unique to small proportion of the population)

Yep, unique to the small proportion of the population with pension wealth beyond the dreams of avarice - and as someone who used the NHS under Labour (nicer cars in the car park, still waiting lists and shit service) the rest of your post is bollocks as well.

Jesus wept - I didn’t think anyone who wasn’t a GP still thinks that GP’s deserve their wildly inflated salaries and pensions. Just get rid of the gatekeeper role and stop pretending the service is anything but utterly hopeless.

You can think what you want. There aren't enough GPs because nobody wants to do it. Supply and demand. Whether from your extremely piss poor knowledge of GP work conditions and pay you think they 'deserve it' it's irrelevant if no buggar will do it...

They won’t go back to the old normal because the new normal is too convenient.

It's especially convenient for service users, as the amount of appointments offered has increased by 31% compared to pre-pandemic (facilitated by the use of telephone consultations) and GPs cannot simply stop reviewing these extra patients.

I don’t give a flying fuck about GP’s working conditions tbh but I care very much about the parlous state of healthcare in this country, not helped by inaccessible primary care

Your statement makes literally no sense. Without GPs there IS no primary care. Surely you realise this. GPs do plenty to help patients and are specialists in their own right. The problem is they do a large proportion of the work for a tiny proportion of the budget and then everyone wonders why they're inaccessible. The disatisfaction with the role isn't with the actual work it's with the sheer volume of work and the backlash that comes from this. You've just said yourself that you don't give a shit about how much a GP has to do. Nobody will until the primary care system literally can't take it any more and then the entire NHS will collapse. You will care then trust me

Clippity clop

@CakeIsNotALuxury how are you doing?