To think the GP receptionist should have asked, 'Are you ok'?

[shonapop]

My mood has been slowly spiralling downwards. I've had many gentle suggestions from family that perhaps it's time to think about increasing my anti depressants.
I've been really putting it off, trying to fix myself with all the usual exercise, meditation, etc. Just getting worse.
Plucked up the courage to call the GP today, feeling like a total failure and on my way to rock bottom.
Told the receptionist 'I think I need to tweak my antidepressants' she said 'I can't get you a phonecall with a GP until next week ' that was it. Didn't ask if I was ok, was it an mental health emergency? Or even what direction was I wanting to tweak them.
What if it was someone AT rock bottom? Suicidal? Can't believe the lack of compassion.

Remember one time when I was suicidal and couldn’t get appointment . I sat outside of GP crying sitting on the floor because I was scared what I might do at home alone. Few doctors, nurses, receptionist walked by and no one asked if I’m ok…I will never forget that . Sorry you’ve encounter similar … They probably deal with that on daily basis. .

Why? There's loads of people on ADs and they aren't a risk to themselves. They are receptionists and not clinicians.

I'm definitely not having a go at the OP as she's suffering from depression and can't help how she is feeling. But I couldn't agree with you more. I'm sick to death of all the shit they get from the general public. It's defintely not something I would like to go into as a job. My tolerance for other human beings is pretty low already.

I'm sure some of them are awful and unprofessional but you get those kind of people in every job. It's sadly the world we live in.

Thanks @shonapop that's what I suspect I have. I am on the waiting list for therapy because I thought I had BPD, however, tracking it more carefully it is definitely related to my periods. The week before specifically.

I don't know why you seem to be getting a hard time on this thread, I hope you start to feel better soon!

Rang my GP on Monday and was offered an appointment in5 weeks! Hmm.

I am sorry you are feeling so bad and hope you can it sorted next week. I am thinking that maybe it is worth stating how grim you feel when you speak to the receptionist - I guess they hear all sorts of requests all day long and glaze over a bit - sock it to her next time!

Telling a distressed, mentally ill person to get a grip.

You're fucking despicable.

Your mental health is not the responsibility of the receptionist. Nor is anyone else’s.

@LikeAStar1994 your absolutely right

Call back the Dr and ask to speka to the duty Dr, if they ask why tell them you are concerned for about your mental, the Duty Fr has 2 hours to call you back

I hope you get sorted. It's grim!
I know talk about kicking a dog while it's down, eh!

Bar one or two exceptions, most people have been quite sympathetic while at the same time disagreeing with you. But it seems you’d rather we joined you in attacking this hapless receptionist for simply informing you when the next appointment is available instead of discussing your mental health at length with you…no wonder there are so many vacancies for GP receptionists.

@shonapop you are being very unreasonable. ‘wanting to tweak my medication’ sounds very casual. I can’t stand people who don’t communicate clearly/maturely and then blame other people 🙄

I’m sorry you’re so Ill but I don’t think receptionists should enter this discussion and ask these questions. So I think the approach is right,

I hope you get the help you need and can see that at some point,

GP receptionist here, and with the information you’ve given in your original post OP I wouldn’t have understood what you were asking for either. We’re not medically trained, and we can only work with the information we’re given. ‘Tweaking medication’ would lead me to direct you to our in house pharmacists to talk about upping/lowering your AD dose, I wouldn’t know you were asking for anything more than that unless you gave me more information. I also won’t ever ask ‘are you ok?’ - that’s not to say I don’t care, but if you’re calling your GP, chances are you’re not ok, it’s a pointless question.

FWIW we take dozens of phone calls a week about MH issues, some patients offer enough information voluntarily that we can direct them appropriately, some people are so upset that they’re unable to vocalise what they’re looking for, but we always, always put them on that day’s call list for the duty doctor because clearly being that upset indicates they need urgent advice from their GP.

We also get dozens of calls where patients are unwilling to give us enough information to be able to assign them the appropriate person/appointment/call back, those calls are as frustrating for us as they are for the patient. We don’t hold back emergency appointments for fun, we hold them because we need them for emergencies and if you can’t give us an indication why you want the appointment, then the patient who has given us that information will obviously be given it instead.

It’s pretty horrific at the moment, our phone lines open at 830 & 2pm and it’s not unusual for every emergency app to be gone 30 minutes later - GP receptionists aren’t power hungry shit heads who enjoy making you tell us why you need an appointment, we’re just under immense pressure to get the appointments allocated to the patients who most need them.

@Ski4130 the system is utterly broken. You’re doing the best you can. Thank you 💐

So say she says to a caller ‘are you ok?’ And they spend the next 20 minutes telling her all about their mental health…
a) she can’t do anything medically or practically

b) she is keeping all the other callers waiting and getting frustrated.
c) she potentially gets in trouble for not keeping to her receptionist duties.

Yabu.

That’s really lovely of you, thank you! I actually love my job, and the patients are the biggest part of that. It’s rewarding and I love helping people, even if it’s only in a small way, but the incessant ’GP receptionists are rude/obstructive/uncaring’ stuff that gets thrown around does occasionally grind my gears 🙂

I agree. My husband and partners instructed all reception staff to not ask about patients conditions. Reception staff arent bound by professional confidentiality. Sadly with the present loss of so many staff and NHS underfunding, reception staff are usually required to get chapter and verse before deciding if its an emergency or requires more than a phone call consultation in a weeks time.

On the automated message before the call was taken it said 'you are about to talk to one of our highly trained receptionists' I would have thought that the mention of anti depressants should be something that would make her ears perk up.

Sorry OP but in our practice around 25-35% of appts are to do with mental health issues - if receptionists had to further investigate every mention of AD's they would never get anything else done.

Sorry but YABU

I hope things improve for you 🙂

Stuff that makes their ears prick up is like chest pain, child with temperature 40+, potential DVT symptoms, that kind of thing. Medication reviews are low on the priority list. Will you be ok until next week OP? You can ring them back, or contact the mental health crisis team in your area if you need urgent help.

Does anyone have any personal experience with adjusting anti depressants when a dip like this happens? Could I just increase my dose from 10mg to 20mg say? Is that too big a jump?

Yeah loads of personal experience, but I'm me, not you… What medication is it? That sounds like it might be a fairly normal increase, depending on the medication, but I wouldn't recommend going ahead without talking to the doctor first. It usually takes a few weeks for a dose change to take effect anyway, so I'm not sure it seems worth doing it without medical advice, just to gain a few days' headstart?

Thankyou. That's a good point actually.

I totally understand why you'd be keen to make changes that might help as soon as possible, I've been there… I'm just thinking about how miserable it would be if you'd ploughed your way through those worst first few days of dose-increase side effects, and then the doctor didn't agree to the increase. Tho if it's any consolation, my personal experience with SSRIs has been that the side effects from a dose increase weren't nearly as strong or long-lasting as from initially starting it.