To think doctors surgeries should not close on Monday

[Viviennemary]

Just read NHS surgeries have been advised to close on Monday. All appoitmemts to be rescheduled. Or is it ok because it's now a bank holiday.

Agree it’s OTT.

are other people’s funerals being cancelled, too? I know some weddings are.

Didn’t know ma’am, but can’t imagine she would have wanted peoples lives so severely disrupted.

My DP works for a funeral company, and the families were given the option to postpone free of charge, but none have chosen to do so.

I’m sure many GP surgeries agree with you, they’ve been annoyed about it on Twitter. But with no school or nurseries open and being advised to close I don’t see they have much choice.

Badly handled by the government.

Surgeries being cancelled, Dr's exams postponed 4 months, food banks closed, flights cancelled..people's lives are hurting over this, why should people go hungry cos of a funeral?! Wtf is this?! The country has lost its mind.

It's only one day. I never realised so many people would be up in arms about getting an extra blank holiday. Britain has precious few of them as it is.

This is ridiculous now. Those are essential services which could cost more lives.

It's not really a "holiday". It's a mini lockdown.

Anyway, we get too many bank holidays. I'd rather just have the time added to my holiday allowance and take it when I want to.

I do not think hospitals should be cancelling appointments people have waited months for either

I saw that a dentist in Torquay was staying open on Monday. I suppose if they don't have staff affected by childcare issues, they can.

Would you like the gp/nurses children sitting in on your consultation? If schools close it is not easy for everything to stay open. They close every other bank holiday as well so no different.

We have very few bank holidays compared to a lot of other countries.

I think the childcare issues are a huge problem. Once the schools were announced to be closing, everything else was going to collapse like a deck of cards.

I don’t know what you want the people who work in GP surgeries to do if they have children in childcare which is closed?

It’s making an already tough job even more difficult but you can’t have a 3yo and a 5yo sit in the nurses room all day. Or even the waiting room.

If it is a bank holiday, then services which close on bank holidays will be closed.

What other solution is there?

I'm a GP and all of the doctors in my surgery were happy to work, but we felt it was unfair to make the admin staff work, especially those who would be struggling with child care. It's actually quite inconvenient for us, because we just had to find other slots for the booked patients, mostly in our own time.

There are no frontline staff in my surgery who have to find childcare. I'd be happy to work however Monday is my rostered day off so whilst everyone one else will get the day off paid I'll just get the day off.

I find it disgusting that hospital appointments have been cancelled

Read the post directly above yours. Explains it well.

I work in a hospital and we are not cancelling appointments. We were given the option to work as normal or take the public holiday. It seems a lot of patients are cancelling though.

Our GP surgery will be open but just for a shorter day. Which seems a good compromise to me.

The impact on medical services is inexcusable. It’s because people want to be “part of history”. But what does this mean, in reality? It means people will spend several hours doing absolutely nothing being bored by the BBC commentary between waking up and 11am when the funeral actually starts. Then there will be the service which may or may not be interesting, if you like watching people in on telly in a church service. Then it will be people watching a coffin being moved on the telly.

People are missing out on a whole day of essential health services so people can realistically watch 2 hours of worthwhile tv in the middle of the day. It’s barking mad. People think they’re going to be “part of history” when in reality they’ll be bored shitless for most of the day.

It would have been better to just have a National 2 hour pause.

Nothings to with 'part of history' .

Everything to do with schools being closed and no childcare !

Wobble those grey cells around folks and you will realise that the average surgeon, physio, dentist , supermarket worker and call centre handler can't take their kids to work with them.

Exactly. Well said.

This is like being upset that healthcare staff don't work for free every Sunday.

Healthcare staff are people and have contracts regarding their employment. Some services work every day, but many have bank holidays off.

It’s inexcusable. Rather than shit schools completely why not have then open for children of key workers for the day like in lockdown?

Hospital appointments and operations are being cancelled, despite the NHS having huge backlogs, when will they be rescheduled for? The appointments are just likely already delayed (my recent appointment was rescheduled for a later date twice) and now people will face an even longer wait.