Gp telephone appointments

[TwinklyFawn]

I have a telephone appointment with a gp tomorrow. It doesn't botheer me having a phone appointment as it is just to discuss the results of a blood test. The thing that bugs me is that there is no time slot for the appointment. I get that they can run behind. I am just paranoid about talking to the doctor if they phone when i am doing a number 2.

Totally agree.

This is so not true.

Some GPs will have a whole day of remote consultations. Some will have a morning of F2F and an afternoon of telephone consults, or a mixture.

We use e-consult and it means your online query is assessed first thing, then either allocated a call, F2F or referral elsewhere eg Pharmacy First or the physio, MH nurse etc.

Sometimes calls are quicker than others, some don’t pick up, some take ages. The clinician can have a list of calls and decide in which order they want to deal with them. Mrs Bloggs might need to be seen with her chest pains or breathlessness so she needs calling first so we can bring her in sooner rather than later. Mr Smith sounds like he just needs a Med3 so he can wait until later. Miss Jones didn’t answer so I’ll try her again later when I can, and Mr Thingy needed an ambulance when I got hold of him so that takes a while to sort out.

We always let you know if it’s morning or afternoon though, and for non urgent calls we usually run roughly to time.

As for going home early - rarely happens. IME most GPs are there until at least 1830 when the surgery closes, usually 1900 or so, unless they’re on a half day and finish about 1400.

Oh and some GPs work from home too, so only do telephone consultations.

It may not be true at your surgery but unfortunately, it is at the one I work at I promise you

Mine gives you a four hour window. May be two hours before or after. Or as my last phone appointment not phone at all even though they requested the appointment.When I rang the next day to see if I’d missed it even though I had my phone with me the whole time they said oh that doctor doesn’t work Mondays.Oh right so the 3 txts I got reminding me of the appointment were all wrong then

Or when you’re on the loo. I take mine with me now!

I had a telephone appointment with the GP and received a time. 10.45am.
Thought that's brilliant. Unfortunately she didn't ring until 1.20pm told
that she does her phone appointments after morning surgery.