AIBU to think getting a GP appointment has basically become impossible?

[KelvinWayne]

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been trying to get a GP appointment for something that isn’t an emergency but also isn’t “leave it forever” either.
Phone lines constantly engaged.
Online form opens at 8am and is full by 8:03.
Told to “try again tomorrow” every single time.
I’m not blaming the staff — they’re clearly overwhelmed — but I honestly don’t understand how this is meant to work anymore. What are people supposed to do if they need follow-up, reassurance, or just… to actually be seen?
I keep thinking surely it’s not just me? But then everyone I speak to seems to be in the same boat.
So… AIBU to think the system just isn’t working anymore?
Or am I missing some secret trick that everyone else knows?

When I hear of the horror stories that some people have with their surgeries I'm always thankful for ours. I have had a problem with my ear recently where over the counter treatments didn't work. Phoned the surgery and had a call with the GP a couple of hours later who prescribed a spray, prescription was sent to the village pharmacy which I picked up the same day. Unfortunately that too didn't work so I walked down to our surgery at lunchtime yesterday. The receptionist said they only had urgent telephone appointments available and would add me to the list. By 4pm I'd had a call from the GP who asked me to go in about an hour later where he checked my ear, syringed it, all sorted very quickly.

DH has also had a number of appointments recently. Blood test results come through very quickly - on one occasion within a few hours. Our surgery also does minor surgery - DH recently had his ingrown toenails sorted having had an appointment with the GP 3 weeks before.

All the staff, from the receptionists through to the doctors are unfailing kind and reassuring. We are really lucky to have them.

I needed an appointment to check a large mole, I got one in 3/days at a surgery near me, not my regular one.

Ours is fine. Not amazing but acceptable.

They insist on telephone triage first even when you know you absolutely have to have a face to face. When they ring the doctor patronisingly says “you’ll need a face to face appointment for that” and you have to resist saying “do you think I don’t fucking know that” and appear grateful for their wisdom instead.

But that aside, you get seen. 3 week wait for routine appointments, same or next day for urgent.

Ours is online only. They won't even entertain discussing an appointment on the phone with you. I've just looked and there's one GP appointment on 31st, the next is 12th Jan, where there are two available.

At least you can phone your GP surgery. I live on the East Sussex coast and calls to my GP surgery (which is in the same town as I am of course) all go to a call centre in Manchester! It seems that GPs and their patients have to be kept apart at all costs! No wonder people go to A&E in desperation as there is no other way of getting medical attention.

I really feel for people who are finding so difficult to access GP services, but some practices seem to be working fine. Thankfully, mine is one of them.

Last time I needed a F2F appointment, I submitted an online request around lunchtime and got an appointment for early afternoon the following day.

On Monday, I submitted an online request about a recurring problem around 8.15, the correct medication was prescribed and prescription emailed to my nominated pharmacy by 8.30.

We used to have 3 different GP practices, but they merged a few years ago and one practice now covers a town and a village with a combined population of approx 25k. Everyone thought it would be chaos, but it seems to be perfectly fine.

I think it must be dependent on the surgery. Ours are great. DD has various long term conditions and I can always get a same day appointment for her if I need to. I just phone and the receptionist messages.the doctor and comes back to me.

All the staff are lovely, including the receptionists which seems to be a big bugbear with a lot of people.

The GP even did a home visit when my late DP was diagnosed with cancer.

They cover a huge rural area and also have the local paramedic base there.

The previous surgery we were with were awful.

Wow, I honestly didn’t expect this many replies. It’s upsetting but also weirdly reassuring to see how many of us are dealing with the exact same thing.
A lot of the replies echo what I’m feeling, that it’s not about emergencies, it’s about follow-ups, reassurance, and actually being listened to before things spiral.
I can’t reply to everyone individually, but I wanted to say thank you for sharing your experiences. It’s helped me realise this isn’t a personal failure or me “doing it wrong.”
For what it’s worth, while trying to navigate all this, I ended up speaking to a clinician outside the usual GP route through an online service. It didn’t replace the NHS or magically fix everything, but it did help me talk things through properly and feel less stuck.
If nothing else, this thread shows the system isn’t working as it should for a lot of people. I really hope something changes, because this level of stress just to be seen isn’t sustainable.

Our GP used to be like that. I ended up working out that I needed to call at 7.58, so the recorded message ended just as the line opened. Too early and you were told they had not opened. Too late and you were further back in the queue.

Ours now operates a system where you call, get asked a few details and they add your name to a list, and they either call when you are at the top of the list to book you in, or just send an appointment.
Seems to work. It may be nearer 3 weeks than 2 before you have the appointment, but at least you get one. They allocate to a specific gp if there is a reason that they are more appropriate.

If urgent they will offer same day where possible.

I suggest a formal complaint listing the dates and times you have tired and failed with screenshots if possible. It sounds a ludicrous system at your surgery.

I can’t complain about our practice. No 8am rush. I rang this week at 8, was told there were no available appointments but did I want to go on the triage list. Gp rang at 8.17, decided he wanted to see us (DD) and we were seen at 9.10.

My blood tests tomorrow were cancelled and replaced with a Christmas Eve appointment. No complaints here.

I had to speak to my dads GPs today for him, in a totally different part of the UK and they were absolutely brilliant!

Got him a same day appointment, did him an ECG while he was there & then to see the GP again after the test, no complaints whatsoever.

The issue overall seems to be lack of consistency in what people are experiencing because I’m personally not seeing any issues.

I changed GP surgeries. I was with mine for 16 years. Also couldn’t get appointments. Had to phone up and be told that all appointments had gone after being on hold.
I’m now at the new surgery and can get appointments. I did today. I filled in the online form, got a text shortly after with a link and could choose times and GPs. Nearly passed out at that little victory.
The old surgery had phone appointments. I had to walk in there today as the pharmacy is attached. There were zero patients waiting. The new one had lots of patients waiting to see a GP.

Why can't they get AI to go through the online enquiries? I bet loads can be told to just go to a pharmacy or something.
I had a mark on my nail a while ago that someone said looked like cancer. Did online form with photo. Doctor called later that day to say they were fast track referring me to hospital. Had hospital appointment, doctor there had a really close look at it, took a picture, expanded it for a better look and said it was nothing to worry about and would grow out eventually. I'm sure AI could have just looked at the photo in the online form and have told me that. No doctor would have need to have been troubled so loads of time freed up plus, I would have had a pretty much instant answer. I know not every query can just be answered in this way but I bet a good portion could.

AI isn't that clever. It is very good at making up answers that sound plausible but it fails to actually be intelligent. They trained an AI to spot skin cancers in photos and it got very very good at it, but it turned out that what it was learning to recognise was whether or not there was a ruler in the picture (placed near the cancer to show the size). You do not want an AI doing this job. AI can look at data amd spot patterns but it doesn't know what "feeling worried" or "in pain" actually mean, it has no frame of reference, it hasn't got a clue, it just knows which words often follow previous words in the data sets it has had fed in, so generates a set of words that seem to fit, without having a clue what those words mean or whether they are true you would get random results with such poor accuracy that it would take longer to check and followup the AIs mistakes than for humans to do the job. Believe me, employing enough staff to run a decent triage service is a lot cheaper than developing and then supplying the computing power for a sufficiently capable AI to do the same job. The AIs we have now are nowhere near capable.