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?

@MrsHamlet
Who will read the online forms? Do you want them read by an administrator with limited medical knowledge? Or a GP, who would therefore not be able to see patients, because they’d be reading forms ?
What if you specify you want a call at 2pm, and 50 other people also want a call at 2pm? What if the person whose call was at 1.45pm has recently been diagnosed with cancer, and is distraught, can’t stop crying - should the GP cut them off mid sentence, because they have to call you at 2pm?

My original question wasn’t “what do YOU want”. My question to everyone was “how would you set up a system that worked for everyone”.

I'd like the receptionist to have a big book on their desk bit like a diary. Whenever somebody asks for an appointment, they say yes, find the next gap and write your name in it.

Our surgery introduced a”Total Triage” system earlier this year and, whenever it comes to filling in the form online, I send feedback that it’s been relatively well designed if you have an urgent need for an appointment but not if you need referral to other services, have a chronic condition or something they’ve not considered such as possible neurodiversity in children. Then you have to choose the closest option and hope someone actually reads the free text box!

Earlier this year I had a recurrent issue with a chest drain site from over a year ago which kept opening up and randomly and looked dusky under the skin - turned out to be retained purse string suture material; there was no option for post surgical complications which was the logical choice; the nearest option was bleeding or rashes which was nothing like it.

They have been told numerous times that there should be the option of filling in a form or calling up and booking an appointment but they claim no one ever gives any negative feedback - despite the local Facebook groups being full of people complaining about the system!

Who will read the online forms? Do you want them read by an administrator with limited medical knowledge? Or a GP, who would therefore not be able to see patients, because they’d be reading forms?

In the first instance, an administrator. I've been on hold for 30 minutes today because part of my repeat prescription has vanished from the ordering system. I don't need a doctor, necessarily - if I could have filled in a form, that would have wasted less of my time.

What if you specify you want a call at 2pm, and 50 other people also want a call at 2pm? What if the person whose call was at 1.45pm has recently been diagnosed with cancer, and is distraught, can’t stop crying - should the GP cut them off mid sentence, because they have to call you at 2pm?

Well clearly you wouldn't say "2pm or bust". As it happens, I'm free all day today but this time next week, I'll be free between 10 and 11 and then 12.30 til 2, and after 3.45. Any of those times would work.

My original question wasn’t “what do YOU want”. My question to everyone was “how would you set up a system that worked for everyone”

It has to have multiple access points. My practice has one - the phone. It simply doesn't work effectively.

I'm a teacher, I'd ask the TA to step in whilst I take the call, have done it before when DC's school have phoned.

I read the last 2, I'm not scrolling back through looking for others I have other things to do.

What do you think then? People who work shouldn't get health care? Should take days off sick, potentially lose their jobs because they have an ear infection or something? Go days without washing in case their phone rings while they shower?

We physically cannot be available 24/7 for days on end. A new system needs to be established. As another pp said, it needs multiple access points. Not just one, ring at 8am every day and pray they phone back at a time you can answer.

Even if they say they'll call between 10 and 12, a 2 hour time window would work.

What was wrong with the old system? Where you ring up and make an appointment in advance for non urgent and keep a couple of slots per day for same day emergencies.

If its that the surgery is serving too many people then they need to stop taking on patients that they don't have resources for. We need more doctors and more surgeries. I don't have a suggestion on how to achieve that because it isn't my job. Its the job of the people running this country. Take it to them.

I will get seen however I can, my priority is my own health. Not going to feel bad about that.

How can you expect people to take days on end off work to wait for a phone call?

I think my receptionist would eat me alive! She's rather self righteous and would tell them to call back later😳

I hate when they cancel an appointment that has been booked weeks in advance to meet the limited availability of the patient (DH working day is 9am to 8pm with variable break times and durations plus often a couple of hours on a Saturday morning) and then don’t have any alternatives to offer. In this scenario, it was for a blood test and, despite trying to get an appointment up to 5 weeks in advance, they had nothing to offer until the Dr put him on a Saturday morning list; 2 days before the appointment they sent a text saying your appointment has been cancelled please reschedule. Went in with his schedule for the following 5 weeks and they had nothing available when he had a long enough break to go there, wait, be seen and get home before he was due back at work. So, a month after he should have had the blood tests, he doesn’t even have an appointment - guess we’ll wait for the GP or diabetic nurse to ring and moan that he hasn’t had the required blood tests for them to monitor his condition (despite not giving any information when they told him he is T2 diabetic just to take the meds they had prescribed and someone would be in touch - which took from February to July!)

And having to ring at 0830 when I start work and then multiple options making you jump through hoops and holding for ages

However I can get appointments

I try to schedule my GP appointments on days where I wfh. Fortunately, I’m quite flexible with my job so can fit an appointment if needs be as I only live a 10 minute walk away from the surgery and can just use my lunch break. However if I didn’t wfh, it would be very difficult.

@Hateam we used to have a big book on the desk. It didn’t magically mean there were gaps though.
But tell me, if 500 people have got in before you, the next gap might not be for several weeks. How will you fix that problem?

But are you aware that you are not the only patient?

Also, can you go into your surgery and speak to someone at reception?

I am aware of that, yes. I'm not an idiot, in spite of your implying that I am.

And no, because the surgeries open two hours after I leave for work. And if you go in to speak to someone, they tell you to call to book.

Mine is great. Fill in an ask my GP form any time from 7:30 onwards. You can specify how you want them to contact you, i.e phone/email/f2f appointment and your availability for a phone call. Last time I completed one at 7:30 saying phonecall anytime as I was off sick, and they rang me within an hour.

Sad that it's such a postcode lottery

Ours is also great. We’re so lucky. Phone up pretty much any time, usually no wait to speak to receptionist who can deal with things like repeat prescriptions, routine appointments etc. Or request a doctor phones you back. Normally they do within an hour. Deal with issue over phone or make appointment for you to come in.

BUT I live in a rural area with a low population. I’ve lived in a city before and it was a different story!

Clearly we have not enough doctors and too many people. I don’t know what can be done, but the current system is failing many. My friend is fortunate to be able to afford to get a private GP as it was just impossible to even get through to her GP when she had a terrible chest infection with a history of pneumonia. Presumably the next step would be A&E, possibly hospital admission as she got progressively worse, rather than an immediate antibiotics and steroid prescription on day 1 sorting her out!

This is a dreadful way to treat people. Totally unreasonable. GPs shouldn’t be able to operate like this. Why we put up with it as a country I do not know but we shouldn’t.

It's several weeks anyway!

I do accept your point, and the GP who posted earlier, there are not enough GPs to give everyone who wants an appointment, an appointment.

Let me throw a question back to you. What are people who work all day supposed to do? How can a bus driver get an appointment with a GP for an important but not urgent issue? Do they have to take a full day off work?

Well that issue applies to everyone in every job doesn’t it? If you work all day, how do you wait for the boiler man to come, or the parcel to arrive, or go to parents evening, or see a solicitor etc. It’s not just GPs that work those same hours. Anyway, all of my friends who aren’t doctors are able to take time off work for medical appointments , rather than using annual leave.

Today I had a BT engineer come round. I was given a window of 11am - 5pm. I had to basically be in all day. No one ever questions that sort of thing. You’d never get a BT engineer coming at 8pm on a Tuesday because that’s when you got home.

There seems to be an expectation that General Practice (which is NOT A&E) should be fully 100% flexible, and offer appointments to suit everyone, regardless of what their preferred hours are. Why is that?

Parcels go to a pickup point and the gas man at least gives you a time window.

I don't use companies that won't give a narrower time window and explain that I work. Most either arrange for on my day off or give a slot. But GPs aren't open weekends either.

So you physically cannot go on your day off and can't just not go to work until they ring you, especially when they won't even say if it will be today or tomorrow. What do you do, take the whole week?

You can take time off for medical appointments but I think its taking the piss to take 2 days off for the sake of a 15 minute phone call that could come at any time.

I live on the East Sussex coast and all calls to my GP go to a call centre in Manchester!

But in those cases you know about this days in advance and pretty much anybody can be in the house to take care of it.

My surgery is rubbish as well. Call at 8am and wait, if by some chance you’re lucky and someone answers the phone you’ll be told a GP will ring between 9-6. I do work from home but much of my day is taken up with teams calls and we have to have cameras on and be 100% present. If I had an idea of time, I could plan my day around it. I can’t keep an entire working day free for a 5 minute phone call.

@Makingchocolatecake I have to go through that rigmarole for a routine non-urgent appointment. There is no way on the e-consult form to differentiate between the two!

edited for spelling mistake!

If they are going to charge for certain things, most of us might as well go private.

I've seen private drs surgeries near me charging like £40 for a consult. At the time of my choosing even if that's 8pm. If the NHS gp is going to charge anything near that then I'll be going private for as much as I can.

I'm in school so I've been off for the holidays. I have had a medical review today with the doctor. The last possible day it could be as its just not possible in term time to ring at 8am to join the queueing system for an appointment where you have no idea what time the doctor will ring you back.
I have been trying to make this appointment for the last 6 weeks.

Every routine appointment needs meticulous planning and I hope to God I never actually get ill.