Dr's phone calls when you work

[Hateam]

To get an appointment with my GP I have to log onto a website at 8am and hope to get a phone call sometime that day.

What do people who have jobs where they are not allowed to take personal phone calls do?

I'm a teacher, my neighbour is a bus driver.

AIBU to suggest this system doesn't work for many working people?

We have a shortage of GPs. There are no "more". To solve the crisis, we need to get the GPs we have to work more shifts in the NHS. That means we have to incentivise them.

We have thousands of unemployed GPs and many more who, like me, have dropped sessions due to burnout. The shortage is of a functional system for GPs to work in, not of GPs.

I have come up with a solution to the problem I raised.

I cannot take calls at work.

If I need to speak to my GP in future I will call in sick and stay off all day on the day my GP will call.

It simply isn’t true that people have not come up with constructive suggestions. It isn’t GP bashing or ‘moaning’. It’s expressions of frustration and often fear at not being able to access the care that we need. Earlier in the thread I questioned why, if you can give a time for a face to face appointment you can’t give a time for a phone appointment. That would work for most people.

Can you really not see the obvious?

Some of my phone calls last less than a minute - it's obvious they need to come in from the start.

Some last 5 minutes, just sorting out a straightforward issue.

Some last 20 minutes, properly dealing with a problem.

There is variation in length of F2F appts, but not by that much. And also I will look down a list of calls and start with those who look like they'll need to come in - ones that clearly won't will be done later.

I know the convo has moved on, but just wanted to share that I'm a teacher and I just answer the call.

I call in at 8am, ask for a telephone call and let them know when I'm not teaching (break, lunch, non -contact). 75% of the time, the dr calls at one of those times. The other times, i just excuse myself for a minute and take the call. I'm lucky that I mostly teach seniors and they're all very supportive, and understand that I need to take the call.

My school would rather that than me be off all day.

What do you mean by 'Just excuse myself?

What does that look like?

We had a system that worked. You rang up, explained the issue and were given either a doctor or nurse appointment. Sometimes a few days ahead but you got an appointment. None of this having to ring up every day.

I went for a blood test recently. While I was waiting a man came out and said the doctor wanted to see him again in a month. The receptionist told him he would have to ring up on the day. Ridiculous.

@taxguru it’s interesting what you say about Blair. He brought in the QOF points system, where GPs had to prove they were checking blood pressures, advising re smoking, maintaining people’s cholesterols etc. The government thought this would save money, because they assumed GPs couldn’t be bothered to do these things, and therefore no GP would get full points. Unbeknown to Blair, us GPs were already doing all these things, for free. So every surgery in the country got full points. Big shock to government when they had to pay us. I’d would advise caution if you want to pay GPs by the hour. Most GPs work twice as many hours as you think they do.

@TeenToTwenties funding would help to an extent, but at my surgery we have not more room. We already extended once into the car park, built 3 new consulting rooms and put GPs in them, but it’s still not enough.

I almost always call within 15 minutes of the scheduled call time, and a lot of the time the patients don’t answer.

My GP surgery is great
They do evenings and weekends
I can ring at 6pm and get seen before 8pm
Or a Saturday or Sunday morning

I tend to get tonsillitis fairly regularly and typically it hits on a Friday which used to mean I was having to go to OOH at the hospital by Sunday. Now I just ring my doctors and get seen

it has always been difficult to book an appointment. call at 8.30, could be in the queue for ages
now log on at 8
in both cases you cannot always be at work.
dh went in person at 8 and got great service.

In my surgery, you can request a certain time eg as I am a teacher, I ask for after 4pm. I am still at work then planning and marking etc… but not with students most days (sine days do extra revision near exams).

They try to accommodate this and so far have and i have had good care. But I agree, it’s not ideal for everyone maybe but it does feel efficiently run in general to me.

It also depends what kind of condition you had, my colleague has a heart condition and needed to see a GP face to face to be advised if she should attend A and E. She was told by reception apparently in no uncertain terms to take her blood pressure at home etc…which she had been doing, hence the phone call. She had to be quite firm and insistent that she had a condition that could be quite serious and had been advised by her GP that she needed a face to face visit if she was getting certain signs and symptoms. She was trying to avoid clogging up A and E unnecessarily. I know triage is necessary and part of the process and can be done really well. But it must be tricky for say 10000 patients on your books. Overall, though, new system has worked ok for us with things like skin conditions and someone on my household was struggling a bit with minor mental health issues and was signposted to other agencies really well that have helped a lot.

Thank you for what you are doing @MumblesParty No system is perfect unfortunately (I know this from more than 20 years in state education!) but it is great that all the professionals can hopefully continue doing as much as they can to help patients who are mostly afraid or frustrated possibly ?? But it is so hard sometimes as a professional. I may be a slight Pollyanna here but it ‘is better to light a candle than curse the darkness’. That’s what I have attempted to do during my career so far, though getting a bit more jaded now at times… I try not to read certain newspapers/ media outlets about the state of the NHS and judge for myself.

It’s no wonder productivity is so low in the UK. It recently took me over 6 hours of my time just to make an appointment to have a coil changed - on hold on the phone to GP surgery, told it was now being done by a separate clinic, phoned them three times on hold for over half an hour, go through, told the person I needed wasn’t there and to phone back tomorrow, on hold again etc etc. Finally got called back when I was driving and couldn’t stop, start the whole process again. When I finally got to speak to them, they didn’t have access to any of my medical records so I had a 45-minute interrogation about my sexual history, sexual orientation, drug use etc etc (despite me telling them I was a very boring middle aged person who just wanted a coil change, they told me they had to go through all the questions on the computer before it would allow them to book anything). I was only able to do this as I waited till the summer holidays (also a teacher) but very nearly still ran out of time to make and get to the appointment. When I first had it fitted 8 years ago, I phoned up, made an appointment with a GP at a convenient time, after that appointment I was booked into the first available fitting appointment without having to make any phonecalls. Things have changed beyond recognition and so much time is wasted on bureaucracy at both ends.

My GP surgery is very good. They use the online system (which grates on me because it's often hard to make the pre-set categories 'fit') but once you've submitted it, they are very quick to triage call back and often see me if face to face needed, the same day.

I do agree though that not knowing when they're going to call is a real pain when you're working or have children to taxi around and you don't want to talk openly about something on hands free. And that's from someone who has a lot of flexibility in my work and home life. I can imagine that it's incredibly difficult for some professions (such as teaching). I'm just not sure what the answer is. I also think that the online system disadvantages the most vulnerable - older people and disabled. So essentially if you're young, able bodied/ minded and tech savvy you'll get an appointment relatively easily, but if you're anything else then you must join the phone in melee and fight to be seen/ heard. I think a lot of people are getting excluded from access to proper care.

@Hateam that's a silly response as you know. It's your work that's the problem. Either look into contacting your GP via the NHS app, works seamlessly in my experience, or check whether they are part of the nationwide Patchs system where you can contact them, or address the childish rule, imo, that you cannot simply tell a manager, or whoever, that you will need to take a call from your GP... obviously there are many, many jobs where that is simply not possible, not keast public facing roles for health care professionals, bus drivers etc., hence there are various different ways of contacting your GP, which ask the question 'are there any times you are unable to be called?'

The system my GP practice runs is simple; you log in at 8am and state your problem. You have to wait for the possibility of a phone call that might come at some point in the next two days. If I'm teaching, I cannot possibly take a phone call. If I miss the phone call I'm back to square one.

What should I do?

That certainly sounds difficult and inflexible on the face of things.
Can you call into the surgery before or after work and ask the receptionist and/or practice manager what you should do?

Many GP surgeries have evening access and Saturday morning opening times, sometimes at a 'partner' practice.

I've been told that 'I have to make myself available for the Dr'.

My doctors is the same as @Hateam
I've tried to explain many times that I cannot answer the phone at certain times. I've begged and pleaded to be called at certain times or certain days. But I just get told that's not how it works and if I miss the call I'll need to start the whole process again.
There was one time the doctor was trying to call me about test results. It actually turned out some tests had flagged up something potentially serious and the doctor wanted to refer me urgently.
They rang 3 times and I couldn't answer. Bear in mind this is an unexpected call not something I booked. So after the 3 missed calls I called them back in a break. Receptionist told me I needed to answer the phone the next time the doctor called. I explained I couldn't as I had patients booked in and could the doctor call me back at my lunch. I was told no I just needed to answer the phone. I said again I really can't I've got a full diary booked back to back. I can't cancel a whole day last minute of patients. Please can they call on lunch as I'm worried. (I didn't know at this point what was so urgent so was scared!) She just kept repeating the doctor needs to speak to me urgently and I need to answer the phone when they call.
Anyway I missed another 4 phone calls over the course of the day until finally I got lucky and they rang during a break. But if that hadn't have happened I don't know what I would have done.

@Mukey you are a doctor as well? or at least you have patients.

And when we did that, 20% of appointments were missed -people just don't turn up

Sounds ridiculous, feel for you and @Mukey I would ask to speak to the Practice Manager then and there and/or lodge a complaint immediately, contact your MP, contact local tv or radio, always looking for local stories. But obviously you need to speak to 'the doctor', that's the priority for you... so practice manager then and there might be your best bet. It could be a receptionist problem, with numerous other similar complaints received about him/her. I wish you well.

People are always going to miss appointments, though.

We have a really, really good system where we can either:

Book an appointment online (non-urgent)
Ring and ask for an urgent same-day appointment
Ring and book a non-urgent appointment
Book an appointment (urgent or non-urgent) in person
Fill in an e-consult and get phone call (and an appointment) if needed.
Fill in an e-consult and ask for virtual appointment

We still had 12 people not show up for appointments one day last week (according to our GP's social media page).

See I dont get paid enough to come up with solutions

But if I did.

We take an area, I'll say the size doesnt matter, because in that set area, we have a surgery that has a drop in, every weekday morning, from 7am til 9.30.
In that same area but different surgery, they will have a drop in from 3.30 to 6pm. Maybe even 7pm.

That covers a whole lot of people. If the patient gets to surgery in the drop in time and is willing to wait, they'll be seen.

Another surgery will have weekend surgeries.

If there aren't enough practices to do all these, they'll have to hybrid. With maybe one week an early drop in, next week a late drop in, and 1 in 4 weekends.

And to get an appointment, call anytime (I'm not saying an appointment is given the same day, but you should be fitted in in the next 2 weeks) or econsult anytime.

Someone will say it wont work because the surgery will be overwhelmed, so dont take on so many patients? If you do take them on, you took responsibility for them, so they should be seen in a reasonable timeframe.

I add weekends because in previous jobs, the only time I could have been seen was a weekend. With the commute and working pattern I stood no chance.