To think GP surgeries shouldn’t be closed over Easter weekend? [Title edited by MNHQ]

[Albertslittletie]

AIBU unreasonable to think there’s no reason for Gp surgeries to be closed for four days over Easter weekend? They aren’t even closed for this long over Christmas.
Why does this happen? I don’t work in the NHS but I don’t understand why most other services seem to run apart from a GP surgery, doesn’t this just force people towards A and E?

You are taking your experiences & applying them to the whole country.
Also, you come out with things like all GPs are leaving to go abroad, thats just not true.

Over 1m F2F appointments every single day, another 1/2 million telephone or video appointments & these figures don't include appointments via apps such as Livi.

@BurnoutGP already works 36 hours per week, via 3x 12 shifts, so is already almost working the standard 37.5hr week.... how much more do you want her to work?

Of course she gets well paid, length oif training & supply and demand but still doesn't earn what Richi Sunak pays and unlike him will pay higher rate tax.

I'm in rural cornwall, apparently one of the worst areas for GP services.... i can see a GP easily for genuine need but if i phone up and say i ve had a mild cough for 2 days, then i will not get a same day appointment.

Someone upthread mentioned that zookeepers and shop staff worked weekend but has not recognised that most weekends staff are students from the local sixth form with full time qualified experienced staff working the rota to supervise.
Perhaps could get a biology bteq student in to work at your GP at weekends.
Even hospitals have mainly junior doctors (sho and reg in old language) to cover evenings and weekends with consultants on a rota often at home to give advice

36 hours a week is part time. It clearly doesn’t enable the work to to get done. Other employers take a view on part time working: the NHS just says “yes”. So the patient isn’t seen. A standard 37.5 hours a week for £100,000 fte looks light to
me. Where else would you be allowed to do this and forget about customers? I just think working the hours you choose and not seeing people leave many customers upset and A&E overwhelmed.

I certainly think too many people don’t care for themselves and bother doctors with minor irritations. It’s also well documented that some surgeries use the 8 am phone lines open system and by 8.30 there are no appointments left. People go to A&E who are not emergencies due to this and lack of care in the home. Basically I’m in the camp of “hope I die before I get old”. Hopefully legislation will enable me to make my own choice when I want to make it.

Funny how people always quite the top end when discussing salaries.

The governments web page has a reasonable summary, 70-104k based on an average of 45-50 hours per week.

So more like 55-82k for a salaried gp working what most people would consider a standard 37.5 hours.

Partners get paid more, but of course have the risks and costs of running a business and the additional hours doing the related workload on top of their clinical work.

The 'GPs' you read about making £££££s generally have given up clinical work and bought up a load of practices and run them as a network.

Very few people working for that salary work 37.5 hours a week. You just don’t unless you are not doing what the job really entails. Plus the pension benefits are massive. So the salary is much greater then the figures quoted did to the state paying in vast amounts for pensions.

That old chestnut. I have paid 30% of my income (because of how the GP pension works we pay both employer AND employee parts with NO NHS contribution at all). For 22 years so far. When you've paid ONE THIRD of your income for 30 years then come and preach to me.
To clarify "the state" makes ZERO contribution to GP Partner pensions.
For now can I suggest you stop reading the daily mail

Did you read my post? In addition to those clinical hours (that's direct patient contact and I personally would struggle to do more safely) I also do 10 hours additional admin and 10 hours management. So more like 56 PART TIME hours. I only get paid part time and it's not 100k.

@BurnoutGP dont waste your energy arguing with people on this thread. It’s just your basic GP bashing thread, filled with people who know nothing about general practice, and have no desire to learn anything. They just want to rant about how lazy we are, how shit the service is, how we’re all just a bunch of money-grabbing slackers.

They’re not interested in how hard we work, the hours we put in at home, the nights we’re filing test results at midnight, the patients we call in our own time because they need our support, the weekends we’ve spent doing vaccination clinics for free, the evenings we’ve spent doing admin, the extra patients we’ve added to our list because we felt bad for them etc etc.

Nor do they care what we did to get here. The hours and hours and hours of work we put in to get our qualifications, the multiple exams we sat, and the junior doctor era, where we didn’t sleep for 2 or 3 days at a stretch on call, didn’t eat or drink for 24 hours because there just wasn’t time.

Time and again I have demonstrated my commitment to my career and my patients, yet MN reduces me to a greedy, lazy waste of space who cares about nothing but my own bank balance.

Luckily our real life patients appreciate us!

I agree @MumblesParty not a chance this thread is going to get better. I’m off to read my 100 clinical letters ready for tomorrow’s onslaught.
Stay strong @BurnoutGP. Thanks for everything you do, you are appreciated. It’s impossible to meet demand at the moment, all we can do is help the person in front of us.
🍷 for all

We employ paramedics (who are sick of the abuse they get on emergency calls) to do our home visits, MSK practitioners to see patients about joint issues, mental health practitioners to see patients with MH issues, clinical pharmacists to do med reviews and general medication queries to try and free up our GP's. And still we do not have enough appointments for the demand.

But then again why do patients feel the need for their child to see a GP to simply confirm they have chicken pox (even though they have no temperature and are not particularly ill), to see their child so they can write a letter stating that they have to have antibiotics at nursery because the parent doesnt want to/isnt able to take time off their work to look after their child; a phone call because they cant swallow their medication and they want something in liquid form instead (if you can eat food, you can swallow a tablet), to ask the doctor if they think they should have the covid/flu booster, to ask the doctor why they are still waiting for the appointment at the hospital for the referral the doctor did 6 months ago, because they want a letter to change to social housing, for the doctor to fill in a massive insurance form for you, for a shotgun licence (which isnt just a simple signature - its a trawl through the patients records from their birth)

And then patients wonder why they cant get to speak to a GP with their chest infection.

As a receptionist we have to signpost patients to A&E, UTC, pharmacists and 111. I have neither the experience or the salary to do this but its part of the job - we don't do it because we cant be arsed - we do it because we are full and we are told by the partners thats part of our job. And when the patient then gives us 10 minutes of abuse because they think we are being obtuse - I think about how lucky I am to have a 10 hour day, slightly above minimum wage job where I get shouted at and threatened daily for doing my job. Fortunately it is an amazing, family first company to work for - because I sure as hell am not there because of the many delightful patients!

Nonsense, you just seem to be on a wind up now.

As @BurnoutGP said, she is doing many more hours on top of her contracted 36 hours.

The Government, a decade ago +, knew all about the demographic time bomb, knew about increasing obesity rates but instead of countering these (and other pressures) they did nothing, infact, by cutting council funding at the same time, have forced people down the primary care route

With the knock on effect that uniquely in Europe, we have increasingly large numbers of people ill and with no chance of going back into the labour market... so now we have record migration, placing more demand on housing and public services.

But people still come out with "but the Tories know how to manage the economy"

Be that as it may, the place is a joke.

Update.

i put in an econsult and they get back to you within 48 hours as a triage type call. I missed the call. The voicemail told me to call back if I still need to talk to someone (erm yes) and they said the next time they can call me back is 17 April.
but if I put in a brand new econsult il get a call within 48 hours.
make it make sense!

But they did call you back, you missed that call, do you expect a doctor to sit around and wait for you?

They have a massive list to get through so they move on through it.

When I'm expecting a call from the doctor, I keep it on loud and near so I don't miss it. Why can't you do that?

Because there’s no signal on the tube. shrug

My point is if I submit another econsult tomorrow I will get a call within 48 hours, not two weeks.

@Frenzi
But then again why do patients feel the need for their child to see a GP to simply confirm they have chicken pox (even though they have no temperature and are not particularly ill), to see their child so they can write a letter stating that they have to have antibiotics at nursery because the parent doesnt want to/isnt able to take time off their work to look after their child; a phone call because they cant swallow their medication and they want something in liquid form instead (if you can eat food, you can swallow a tablet), to ask the doctor if they think they should have the covid/flu booster, to ask the doctor why they are still waiting for the appointment at the hospital for the referral the doctor did 6 months ago, because they want a letter to change to social housing, for the doctor to fill in a massive insurance form for you, for a shotgun licence (which isnt just a simple signature - its a trawl through the patients records from their birth)

Some of these things are because people don't know where to go, haven't heard about the referral so automatically can't check it somewhere else, are told by the NHS website to get it checked out (so you think oh I thought it was okay, now I'm not sure), or because everything signposts to the GPs....
And I think eg tablet swallowing is different to food swallowing (if I understood correctly what Speech & Lang told me (I still have to crush tablets and take liquid forms sometimes even though food is okay for me now)).

Relevant to this thread though (and thinking about my recent appts reminded me) - my local surgeries share resources and do routine appts at the weekend sometimes. Really useful. But it's a bonus and not expected by the patients.

It is awkward though if you don't know when it might be. I don't mean to the minute, but eg the morning of one day. It's not always within 48hrs so you don't know whether/when to expect it. Occasionally things get passed straight on to (eg to community physio) so you're not called anyway.
(My surgery don't always sent text slots, so I keep logging in to check my appts if I've put in an econsult).

OP, 17 April would probably be a set appt or a am/pm slot, ie set. Otherwise it could be at any time over 48hrs.

@Albertslittletie

I really don't understand you or your needs!

You started bitching about gp services being unavailable for 4 days straight, not that you particularly needed anything previously to these 4 days of closure.

Now, on the other side of this monumental 4 day closure, you ring for an appointment, when you know it may be quite busy because of the aforementioned, by you, closure.

Now you're upset that you got a call back that wasn't at a convenient time for you, so you ring back, and get an actual appointment for 2 weeks time (which let's be honest, you'll probably survive) and that's still not good enough for you.

• You don't want GP surgeries to close for 4 days
• You want an appointment
• You put in a e-consult request
• YOU miss your phone appointment
• You're annoyed at the 2 week wait you're given for missing your e-consult.
• You're now baffled that the receptionist had to politely point out, if you're still walking and talking, then maybe stop wasting our fucking time but if you feel oh-so precious, please waste our e-consult appointments AGAIN so somebody with a real medical issue can be pushed off the call back list??

i think you need a biscuit

Because the 48 hr call back should be for new E consults presumably