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.

Incidentally, did you know our beloved government cut medical school placments by 25% this year? That'll sort everything out for us.

No I didn’t. That’s stupid. I love this insistence that medical and university courses are so heavily subsidised at a time when training is expanded and is paid for by the students. It makes you wonder how on earth it was all paid for 40 years ago.

This economic system is not working.

Even if you'd had a face to face I doubt you'd have been prescribed antibiotics that first day as the infection wasnt severe. Nothing worse than earache, hope you recover soon.

hope You feel better. it’s standard at my GP to have a phone call first I prefer it, more convenient. I don’t know why you didn’t take the antibiotic offered on the 111 call? Or try pharmacy as an over the counter product might have cleared it initially. Antibiotics should be last resort I avoid them if at all possible

@KweenieBeanz depends on the information received when the patient speaks to the Receptionist in the first instance. The GP has no need to ring back, they get the Receptionist to ring to book you in for a face to face appointment with the GP so no doubling up.

Ive had several receptionists tell me it's not urgent so I won't get Ana Pp today and I tell them to go and tell my symptoms to a dr.... i then get a phone call. And it's not because I'm being difficult it's just I know what's urgent and what isn't and they should get some better training instead of just turning everyone away

We need to consider a co pay system. The NHS isn’t a sacred religion. It’s a broken badly run mess and just throwing more and more into it will make it a bigger mess.

People are expecting more and more and with our older population it’s getting worse and worse.

France has a much better system. Why aren’t we looking at this sort of change?

Similar experience last week with DS who's 16. Over the summer he was extremely tired and weak (beyond normal for a teenager). As he is 16 he made an appointment with the GP and went alone. They sent him for blood tests after a 2 minute appointment. He had to phone for the results and was told all normal.

The tiredness and weakness has continued, to the extent he can't race ( he's a swimmer) and it's affecting every aspect of his life. He's also become dizzy and faint when he stands up.

Our surgery only does same day appointments. So on Friday I was at the surgery and requested an appointment for him. The receptionist offered him 11.00. When I said he was at school, could he have an afternoon appointment, she said as he was able to go to school, it's not an emergency, so he couldn't have an appointment!

After a lot of argument, he eventually got an appointment for after school.

The GP was great this time, but it turns out, he may have a heart condition and will have to go through a whole series of tests! If we had listened to the receptionist, this would have continued even longer.

It seems like you can't be working or at school to need an appointment at the doctors!

Op why are you still working? You need to be on sick leave, resting and allowing your ears to heal!

OP, you need to write that letter of complaint to the Practice Manager and explain how appallingly you were treated.

You also need to go back and get ear drops and maybe a stronger course than amoxicillin .

Many GP services are amateur at best. My doctors are good but getting in to see them is impossible. I really think the entire system needs an overhaul.

I live in Ireland where there is no NHS so I can be objective.
You are lucky with the NHS where there is more or less free health care for all.
However it doesn't seem fit for purpose if you can't get to see a GP when you have a severe ear infection and the guardian at the gate doctor's receptionist decides whether you get an in person appointment or a phone call. 😮🙄

However the alternative, where I live, is that you pay €65 to see a doctor and can often get a same day appointment.
You also pay for medication up to a certain limit.
I don't qualify for a free medical card which includes free GP visits though many in Ireland do.

The NHS is wonderful in theory but......

Unfortunately, you need to be prepared to fight for what you need in England at the moment. Whether it's a gp appointment, dentist appointment, social services, adult social care or mental health services. Everything is so overburdened right now they are turning away every case that is not an actual crisis or emergency.

@waterSpider
We pay GPs shedloads of money, but the 'cult' of the NHS stops people making criticisms because we should be grateful. Latest data from NHS Digital shows that GPs contracted to the NHS earning an average of £142,000, and that's after their practice expenses.

England
The estimated average income before tax of GPs in either a General Medical Services or a Primary Medical Services practice was:
£111,900 for combined (contractor and salaried) GPs
£142,000 for contractor GPs

You neglected to post the average for salaried GPs (although you did provide the link. £64,900 pa. This will be most of the GPs in the average surgery.

The NHS is an absolute shambles I don’t know how anybody who has any experience of a different system could continue to support it. We have private medical care now as part of a package at work and it would make me choose to work for one company versus another.

I’d put in a formal complaint.

Why GP aren’t doing zoom calls (as private doctors are) so that they can physically see the symptoms beats me.

My DF now sadly in a care home used to use the GP service time and time again and because he was firm bordering on aggressive he got what he wanted. The receptionists allowed him to push them into giving him a same day appointment.

When I went in with him and said he was likely to move into a care home I swear they cracked open the champagne. There are many people - the worried well (my SIL), the pushy, the people with time on their hands to worry about every little thing, the people with sharp elbows who use the NHS for their own ends that needs addressing.

That sounds extremely unpleasant and deeply frustrating. Ear infections can be incredibly painful and to have to endure it for days must have been hellish.

Look after your poor ear! It needs very gentle care in order to recover.

This was an entirely reasonable response from the receptionist. You were offered an emergency appointment and refused on the basis that you couldn't be arsed to remove your son from school which he wouldn't have been at btw if it was a genuine emergency...

I'm surprised the op is getting so much stick here. Surely if you have ear pain someone needs to actually look in it?

In the height of covid I had something similar and receptionist said straight away I needed a face to face as doctor would need to look in my ear(s). how can they tell what is going on inside someone's ear without looking in it? What if the patient isn't very good at describing their symptoms over the phone?

Why did you let yourself get fobbed off? I certainly wouldn’t have given them the convenient excuse of telling them I was recovering from a cold. It’s almost like you went along with it to prove a point even though you knew you had a more serious problem.

THE major problem in the NHS is lack of staff. Sky ran this report recently saying that the number of people needed NOW is the equivalent of the city of Newcastle.

news.sky.com/story/amp/workforce-the-size-of-newcastle-needed-to-ease-gridlocked-health-and-care-system-12725940

The trouble is Britain’s social snobbery and political ideology has been allowed to get in the way of dire practical needs. No one can train into a system that requires huge lifelong debts: working people need part time work and regular hours to fit in with families. Work has to pay.

You rang the doctors after having an earache for an hour? It does sound rather ott. My 4 year old had an earache that woke him in the night last week, he was awake in our bed crying on off all night and it was still there that morning so he took the day off. There was gunk too. I said if he still had it the day after I'd ring the doctors. As it happens the earache was gone by the next night and the gunk cleared up a day or so later. Granted you clearly needed help in the end, but if

Like my son it could have just been the tail end of a cold and cleared up itself without antibiotics.

I agree with this. I think your GP might have been right at the time. You could have called back when it didn't get better?

Our GP only does phone consultations in first instance but will see you if necessary.

So in my opinion (which I'm entitled to, as you are yours)

They are not pulling their weight because:

1. They are the only NHS service to not to have gone back to face to face appointments as routine. Resulting in incorrect triaging (as above) more misdiagnoses and more need for follow up or multiple appointments for same issues.
2. My surgery closes everyday 1 hour over lunch time and every Thursday half day for 'training'. The hospital I work at, often do 12 hour shifts with less than 15 min break or sometimes none at all.
3. Many of the patients sat in A&E are there because they were unable to access a routine healthcare appointment at their GP surgery, GPs working partime and taking bank shifts at private hospitals...
4. My personal experience of my GP and Drs surgery over the last 18 months has been appalling. Including incorrect prescribing of medication, not reviewing my medical file prior to prescribing, not triaging my 2 week old baby appropriately ending in a hospital stay. When I questioned this, they tried to blame my midwife/health visitor anyone but themselves. Ultimately I challenged it and they eventually admitted fault.

Appreciate this is not all GP's so my blanket description was maybe a little unfair but I imagine there is not one person in my locality who hasn't queued number 80+ in a call for an hour trying to get an appointment only to then be told all appointment gone for the day.

Sadly NHS GP's will become a thing of the past and very much life NHS dentists most end up going private. The hospitals will be overrun and the NHS will collapse.

Happy Sunday!

I have less and less faith in the NHS, and think it’s not fit for purpose. Embarrassed that people in the uk think it’s the best in the world. All of my friends bar none from European countries who live here think it’s shit!!

Sick to death of GP’s not doing f2f appointments because they can’t be arsed!
The whole system needs to be overhauled! Embarrassing that people were clapping a couple of years ago!