To think this is what happens when receptionists are the ones who decide whether or not you actually *see* a GP? (Ear infection)

[lCantHearYou]

Wednesday last week- woke up with an intense pain in my left ear, and assume I’ve just jammed my ear plug in a bit too far, but over an hour later the pain is still there and I can’t hear out of that ear, so I ring the GP surgery.

The receptionist, based on no medical expertise whatsoever, asks what the problem is and unilaterally decides that all I need is a telephone appointment. The GP she’s scheduled the call with is well known in our community for not doing face to face appointments if she can help it and generally having the attitude of just wanting to get you off the phone as quickly as possible.

Later that morning, GP call. I explain that I’ve been having this very intense pain for several hours now that paracetamol isn’t really touching, my ear is ringing very loudly and all external sound is very muffled and barely audible.

She decides over the course of the 3 minute call that since I’m recovering from a cold I’m probably just a bit congested, tells me to take some Sudafed/other decongestant and paracetamol and it should right itself in a few days.

I start alternating pseudoephedrine, paracetamol and ibuprofen, but the pain wakes me in the night every night.

Thursday evening DH, the DC and I travel up to PILs house.

Friday morning, DH and I leave for a long weekend abroad (on the Eurostar, thank god we didn’t fly or I’d probably have at least one ruptured ear drum).

By Friday evening the pain and hearing loss has now spread into the right ear as well. Spend the whole weekend in pain and practically deaf, which kind of spoils things somewhat.

Monday evening, we all get home. 3:00 am I wake up in so much pain I can’t keep still, DH wakes to the sight of me sitting upright, rocking back and forth with my hands clamped over the back of my head. He calls 111 who schedule a phonecall with a Dr… who rings back 3 and a half hours later and says, sounds like an infection, I can prescribe antibiotics or you can just wait and see your own GP. I opt to see my own GP, so 111 Dr puts in notes that I need a face to face appointment.

So we’re back on the phone to the surgery, to the receptionist who’s halfway through saying “I can schedule a phonecall…” when I tell her about 111 Dr’s advice to seek a face to face appointment. Then she relents and schedules one with a different GP to the one I spoke to the week before. At the actual appointment, this GP barely needs to glance in my ears before saying it’s a severe infection, inner ears are very sore and red, lots of pus and gunk and, in her words, “looks incredibly painful”.

I’ve now been on amoxicillin and cocodamol (which I’m alternating with ibuprofen) for 5 days now. I can still barely hear a thing beyond the very loud ringing and the sound of my own pulse throbbing in my ears. All external sound is very muffled and distorted. If I wait too long between taking pain meds I fucking know about it… I’ve taken to sleeping with the cocodamol under my pillow so that when (not if) the pain wakes me in the night I don’t have to grope around on my bedside table to find them. Part of my job involves being on the phone, sometimes for hours at a time, so I have to jam my earphones right into my ears and turn the volume up full, and by the end of my shift (I work very late at night) I’m doubly exhausted from the effort of straining to hear anything.

AIBU to think that if, on that first day, the receptionist or indeed the GP had paused for a moment and thought “hmmm, intense inner ear pain, badly affected hearing, maybe get her in so we can see if there’s an infection”, then I could have started on antibiotics that day and at the very least the infection would likely have been contained to one ear and might even be starting to get better? As it is the receptionist didn’t bother, the GP didn’t bother, and instead of getting better it got considerably worse, the antibiotics are making fuck all difference and I’ve now had almost two weeks of intense pain and hearing loss for no good reason? And AIBU to be pretty pissed off about it?

Sorry for the twilight rant… I’ve just woken up feeling like the back of my skull is being squeezed. Again.

It's not the fault of the NHS though is it? Do you think medical staff went into the profession to deliver this level of service? Blame the Administration that brought us here. Disclaimer - I am not a medic, I have no medics in my family. I have elderly parents 200+ miles away who desperately need medical care. Iam an only child. I cannot get hold of my own doctor.

That's a great system. I bet there aren't many people who book an appointment and don't show up.

Some of them might love a power trip, as in any job. Some might be just plain rude and nasty.

However, most of them have now been told to offer phone appointments only for 99% of problems and have little control over what they actually offer, despite the attitude they might give out.

Also some have to be firm, because some idiot patients refuse to give any details to the reception when trying to book appointments "who gave you your medical degree?" and end up getting appointments that should have been sent to the pharmacy or A+E, wasting appointment slots others could have used.

OP has blamed reception, rather than the GP who ignored the problem. Also OP then went on holiday for the weekend?? You have to take responsibility for your own health. If you suspect a doctor has given you the wrong advice, you just don't allow yourself to go deaf and sit in pain, you seek a second opinion. You all know the NHS is crap. You shouldn't have to chase the right answer, but unfortunately that's the case at the moment.

GPs have provided the first line of care for anything except A&E since the creation of the NHS. The NHS isn't "outsourcing" general practice. That's how it's supposed to work.

it's cute that you believe that GPs actually have much say in how things are run either

Yes, I don't disagree with this either, I know that there are generally issues with recruitment and understaffing, and GPs are working incredibly hard too and also coming in for a lot of criticism. But having said that they do have more control than the receptionist over what goes on in their individual practices and there does seem to be more vitriol towards receptionists than to the GPs themselves.

Perhaps GPs should just walk out then. If they're that useless the NHS surely won't miss them.... (Disclaimer it wouldn't last a day and everyone knows this)

Why are you blaming the receptionist? She booked you an appointment with a GP for the same morning you called.

You first spoke to the GP on Wednesday and your symptoms worsened and you had a subsequent F2F with a GP on Monday. If you hadn’t gone to PIL/ weekend away, you’d have called the GP back on Friday saying the pain is getting worse, so you do bear responsibility here, OP.

Not sure what the point of all that detail was, especially when your ears are still throbbing.

@cc1997 Of course any job has people on power trips. But it's a bit different when you can get seriously sick. Like I said, if I didn't get antibiotics asap, I'd have easily got sepsis. I knew what the problem was, so just needed the treatment to make me better. I still got told 'we will message you in 2 days'. That is not acceptable.

The receptionist is following the directive from the surgery which employs her. The problem lies with the GP who should have chosen to see you face to face after your telephone consultation.

I have been a surgery receptionist, albeit only for six months. They are paid minimum wage or just over and in my experience treated poorly by both the doctors that employ them and the general public.

I don’t understand why you didn’t accept the emergency supply of antibiotics which were offered to you.

Best practice for booking appointments is decided by the partners of the practice, so you're best speaking to the Practice Manager about the process for deciding who gets appointments and they'll be able to advise if the receptionist made a mistake or if they followed the guidelines.

Everyone wants to be seen on the day and they can't accommodate them all.

Hi OP, sounds horrible, and sorry about the blame-shifting going on here.

Can't you take a few days off from work? Jamming anything onto an infected ear can't be good. Hope you feel better soon!

Before I joined police I did a stint for a year as a go receptionist.

Fucking awful job . They are following the instruction of the gops and practice manager - for min wage . The amount of abuse I got really wasn't worth the wage - and I say that as a cop now where at least if I get abused I'm getting paid a decent wage for it !

My GP surgery receptionist told me recently that they are only dealing with “life threatening” issues. I couldn’t help but politely point out that if the condition was life threatening I would hardly have rung the surgery as it’s generally a 20 -30 minute wait to speak to reception.

The NHS is broken. Chronic lack of funding and compounded by lack of primary care/screening. I don’t know what the answer is. Feel like everyone I know has a medical negligence take if varying degrees of seriousness. It’s v worrying.

GPs have provided the first line of care for anything except A&E since the creation of the NHS. The NHS isn't "outsourcing" general practice. That's how it's supposed to work

GP’s are now private entities. They contract to the NHS- the NHS has no say in how they spend that budget.

so your private GP company can choose to pay the 2 GP’s that own the business enormous salaries, employ a minimum wage receptionist, and that’s it.

it is outsourcing. The nhs is contracting outside the NHS, using a 3rd party to provide it’s services.

we need to go back to GP’s being NHS employees and GP services being provided by the NHS. The private companies are so worried about their budget they don’t do anything.

when I worked in a&e certain GP practices were well known for just sending to a&e when they could have referred a patient directly- they did this because if they sent a patient for example to radiology for an x-ray, they GP pays for it. If they sent to a&e and they get the x ray, the don’t pay for it.

GP’s are now driven by money and budgets, not patient welfare.

Sounds eerily similar to what happened to me recently when I had a UTI. Hope you’re feeling better soon, earache is the worst!

In my country, GPs are part of the national healthcare system and they're not on private salaries. A lot more things get dealt with by them. I'm seeing this here all the time: GPs not bothering to see anybody in person, so they end up going to the A&E.
GPs still get paid.

You are absolutely right OP. Your only mistake was in expecting your gp to see you or following their advice. I find now that instead of trusting them I do research myself and look up nice guidelines. It is dreadful that I have to do this.

Ummm....

You do need to rest to allow antibiotics to work. And if you are still in that much pain now you probably need another check up. It was once a week when I had an ear infection, turned out to be fungal. After the acute infection cleared then antibiotics were doing nothing

Those alternatives and the USA system cost more money so wouldn’t it be better to fund the NHS properly?

It sounds v painful.

I'm surprised you didn't call on the Thursday after you were woken overnight by the pain, or the Friday, or see a French pharmacist, or opt for your own GP rather than antibios from thr 1

@cc1997 I didn't end up seeing any health professional actually. They sent the antibiotics straight to the pharmacy. I don't insist on f2f appointments everytime. Only when it's necessary. Not everyone wants f2f appointments actually. Telephone ones have their merit. But they are overused by MANY GP practices, so it's pointless seeing my Practice Manager, because they will probably fob me off to some national guideline.

This is the biggest load of rubbish. GPs have a whole heap of regulatory bodies that they have to answer to who are ultimately responsible for their finances as they decide what makes a surgery most of their money. These bodies find every way they can to effectively 'not pay' the surgery for vital services because they're skint just like the rest of the NHS. People are offended at paying professionals fairly who care and who have trained tirelessly for years to have knowledge and experience that only a fraction of the public have yet they're not offended at the governing bodies who are systematically and shamelessly destroying the NHS. This blows my mind and not in a good way tbh

we need to go back to GP’s being NHS employees and GP services being provided by the NHS.

GPs have never been paid employees of the NHS this was the deal that was done when the NHS was created. GPs didn’t want to give up their independence so they were contracted to the provide services. The difference now is that US conglomerates have bought up GP practices that were struggling.

-antibios from the emergency doctor rather than risk your own GP system again. Pharmacists here are also good and underused front line care.

You're right that phone appointments increase risk. My understanding is that the GPs directing GP practices have generally decided they are a necessary evil to get through the massive caseload.
Gatekeeping receptionists are frustrating but what else can they do?

I know how I'm voting next GE.