To think that people have become completely incapable....

[memorial]

Ok so I'm a GP (yes yes I know I could be anybody) and have been for over 20 years.
But bloody hell our society have become completely and utter incapable of any kind of self care or self responsibility. I have never known anything like the kind of demand we are facing. And I'm sorry most of it is just complete and utter nonsense. Over and over again.
Genuinely ill and needy people are being lost in the deluge. It's absolutely impossible to offer any kind of decent care. And we are losing doctors, nurses and staff rapidly. And we cannot recruit. It's not about pay It's about absolutely ridiculous workload and risk.
Yes the system is broken yes we need more of everything.
But every single thing does not need GP hand holding. It doesn't need 2 page complaints because you didn't get what you wanted when you wanted it.
Some days I just think people won't be happy until I go and wipe their arses for them.
I'm done. And it's not just me.

Ignore the typos/errors. Haven't got my specs on!

@Blue4YOU You have had a horrendous experience with certain individuals. I am not sure why you are taking it out on the OP or why the fact you have a PHD is relevant. Certain things you said about lawyers not offloading for one are simply not true. This sounds personal in a way I don't understand.

I wasn't directing anything but sympathy your way, @Blue4YOU in my mind, and wasn't tagging you, no. And I'm so sorry about what you went through

I'm actually shocked that since 2004 a woman could sit in front of a GP and be told that she can have some Gaviscon for heartburn but has to make a separate appointment to discuss something more serious affecting the actual pregnancy like bleeding, foetal movement or pain.

The people asking for letters so they can get a massage or run a marathon are trying to engage in self-care. They aren’t In charge of a system that requires a doctor’s permission to engage in that self-care.

Even hair dye, a tattoo or a piercing might qualify as self-care if you think about it. Doing something nice for yourself and improving your body image can make a person take better care of themselves overall. Again, the people trying to access these services aren’t the ones who set the rules requiring a form be signed.

I generally don't go to the GP - i just got forced to go to get a repeat prescription which was frustrating. I also find that often to get to see a specialist you are made to go to a GP which is waste of everyone's time but other than that...
some of those examples you quote are harsh - some people don't understand letters from the hospital - they are not medically trained- how do they get them explained? sometime hospitals write to the GP and not the patient - what do you do then?
and the constant pain part - i'm sorry as the patient you don't care that the test results are negative - this doesn't make the pain go away

Better safe than sorry because your 3 year old has a
sore ear? Jesus wept!

That was me back in the day. I'm not a healthcare professional but I am well-educated and considered to be intelligent but I am puzzled at how you want to see people with diabetes who don't look after themselves but you don't want to see people with IBS. Personally, to this day, I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a child with a sore ear. I don't live in the UK, and I would still pay rather than risk my child's hearing.

So maybe, instead of complaining that people aren't good at triaging themselves, you need to campaign for the NHS to take on more doctors so that your workload isn't so mad.

Have you thought maybe about listening to your patients first time round so they don't have to keep coming back. Unfortunately for you, you chose a career as a g.p which is basically a glorified handholder if you didn't want to deal with basic mundane problems you should of specialised in a different area of medicine.

But now you are just putting everyone off. What about that headache that becomes a brain tumor? Oh no mustn't call the GP.

I love my doctor, he knows I have steri strips and superglue and know how to use them so as not to put pressure on A&E for something self inflicted. He knows if I call that it's important.

I quite fancy him actually 🤣

The point is that a child with a simple sore ear does not need to see a GP.

I find this interesting and have seen it elsewhere as well as here:

When someone says GPs are overwhelmed with people who really should have realised they don't need to be seen by a GP, and that a lot of it is trivial and self-limiting, and that some of this might be a lack of resilience or self-reliance, very often some of the first responses will be complaining that this does not take mental health seriously enough. Which, to me, sort of suggests that the responder thinks of mental health problems as a type of lack of resilience or self-reliance. I have had a mental illness for twenty years and very, very rarely come across a GP who takes it anything but very seriously. Actually I've found them better than specialist mental health services very often. One GP was, without my knowledge, taking time from his excruciatingly busy schedule as the senior partner of the practice and a high-up in the CCG to repeatedly phone mental health services and explain why they should (essentially) pull their bloody finger out. I only discovered this when I later got my psychiatric notes. I know he was busy because I would see his entries on my medical records timestamped both before I get up in the morning, and after I go to bed at night. And on New Year's Day.

The system is broken.
I can't even get a GP appointment for my ongoing medical conditions. Instead the triage nurse tells me to go to A&E every time.
Yet people I know with a sore throat or blocked ear get a same day GP appointment. Why is the triage nurse not telling them to go to a pharmacy?

@blueshoes
Maybe read the OP’s response to my earlier post - then you will see.
A phd isn’t relevant to her post but she stated that I’d never needed serious care from a GP and didn’t understand highly trained professionals.
I did and I do.
Its further up on the thread.
Im not just waving a big experience dick about- she had no compunction about trying to put me in my place and say she felt sorry for me, in a sarcastic way.
I do t give a shit about her, her qualifications or her views. But if she starts to patronise me, when I’ve had devastatingly bad treatment at the hands of various NHS staff, of various grades, primary and hospital settings, I’m going to get angry.

Retire then

That's assumptive. I'm currently supporting three nurses through PhDs. Whilst they're working in the NHS. There are a couple of doctors on one of the other programmes too.

It's really not either/or.

@Blue4YOU what are you on?

@Azandme
Good for you. Maybe read our post interactions and stop assuming

She probably will - along with many colleagues - and then people will complain about that.

Isn't the actual problem that we don't have enough doctors?
I feel like OP is blaming the patients for coming when they aren't ill enough.
But really the problem is not training enough doctors for the population especially now there are so many elderly people.

OP I'm a GP too, having qualified 30 years ago. I agree with everything you say, but you're brave to post here, where GPs are largely disliked. Everyone has an anecdote of a negative medical experience which seemingly renders anything we say worthless. And yet we're meant to have no feelings ourselves. We're meant to be saints, or we're accused of being in the wrong profession.

I'm reducing my hours and taking a pay cut, because I can't do it any more. We advertised for a new GP a few months ago. Guess how many applicants. None. Not a single one. Why? Because of the attitudes of many people on this thread, that's why. Soon GPs won't exist any more.

I was misdiagnosed by various health professionals including a GP despite it being the first time in years I'd been to a doctor. The GP and then other professionals over a month period kept fobbed me off with 'viral infection' get some rest, until eventually I demanded to see the scan they took and the doctor was like oops, we forgot to look at it - it seems you have xx

Apart from the fact I was at home in agonising pain for weeks with no antibiotics, I could have died. Was fobbed off for something else a few years, before that too so I feel so I've not had the best experience with GPs that said.. I have a colleague who goes to the doctor for EVERYTHING! Once she said she was going to the GPs due to leg and heel pain (she walks a lot) so I suggested that she stretch more she just went silent.

Instead of using her initiative, she was willing to run to the doctors at the first sign of any pain or discomfort. I can imagine there are a lot of people like that clogging up the phone lines and sucking up the appointments, so I get how frustrating it must be and they will take patients with a pinch of salt. But I think considering I barely visit the doctor, they should take the rare times I do show up a bit more seriously, instead of tarring us all with the same brush.

That's the plan 😁

Yes OP I get what you are saying. I worked in the NHS and had to leave. I wasn’t a GP but it was for the same reasons. Something is broken. It’s like a revolving door continually.

“Pretty much everyone I know waits until they are very, very unwell before seeing their GP - the male members of my family in particular will have an arm hanging off before they’ll actually make an appointment (they are lucky if they ever get one, of course). I’ve seen two loved ones die from illnesses which began with pretty trivial symptoms which they didn’t feel they should get investigated as they didn’t want to be seen as a nuisance.”

This.

And when we do eventually go, we are often dismissed and patronised, your comments @memorial about IBS being a prime example. My GP tells me that my IBS is all in my mind and is caused by depression which is not helpful when I’m shitting and vomiting and crying with pain all at the same time sometimes to the point where I’ve passed out. It’s been made very clear that I’m considered to be a time wasting malingerer, just another hysterical woman, because all the tests have come back negative and we can’t find what’s triggering it. I don’t even talk to my GP about it any more, I just continue to suffer. And I mean suffer.

But of course, we can’t have you getting irritated by people like me continuing to ask legitimate questions about our health concerns can we.

Difficult thread to read.

OP comes in for a rant, as do so many, and so many posters want to take a pop. Why? What is it that makes you want to kick someone when they are down?

GPs, nurses and so on are people like the rest of us. They want to feel valued and to have some sense of work-life balance.

If you are a person who is sensible and respectful then clearly OP is not talking about you.

If you treat medical staff poorly then fgs stop, you are ruining it for everyone else.