to expect an out of an hours doctor to coma and see my doctor when...

[pinkdolly]

My dh is serving away with the forces. I dont drive and even if I did, I am ill with bad flu and a chest infection and 27 weeks pg so cant take anything for it (I haven't slept for 3 days!). I have 2 other young children, 1 of which also has flu.

My poor dd1 (6) has blood coming out her ear and is crying in pain despite having calpol and nurophen. She has flu and I think (tho I am not a doctor myself) she may have perforated her ear drum. She hardly slept all night due to the pain.

Now I know it's not life threatening stuff, but come on you'd think they'd come out and see her. Nope, I have to ring around trying to to find someone to drag her out for me while I stay here looking after myself and my other sick dd. Grrr...!

LEM, the item I was prescribed was something I am allowed on repeat prescription anyway, so that may be an exception to the prescribe only if seen rule.

PHW, I think the issue with the child was that OOH didn't consider them that ill, so ambulance wasn't called, but OOH might not have made this mistake if they had actually seen the child. It is difficult for a parent to call an ambulance if they have spoken to a doctor and the doctor didn't consider it necessary.

Having said that doctors are only human and some mistakes are always going to happen. It is more of a question of the reliability of over the phone diagnosis, and if that increases risk of mistakes.

My SIL has had transport to see an out of hours GP for my niece on a couple of occasions - this came about after contacting NHS direct but think it was at night/early morning so not sure whether this made a difference.

I've also used the out of hours service which here is based at the hospital, but had to get myself there.

Even though it may not have taken long for the doctor to see the OPs daughter it is pretty busy time of the year, and IME they have a doctor that stays at the service and another that does home visits and it may be that they had to prioritise home visits and just couldn't fit the OPs daughter in. I assume they took a lot of info first.

PHW, yes, I think that is the best advice; parents should follow their instincts.

If you're likely to be sick in the back; if you look highly contagious; if there just isn't going to be one in your area for a few hours (common around here).

BTW our OOH refuses to fax prescriptions so you have to get someone to drive there (up to 45 minutes), physically pick up the prescription, then travel 20 minutes further to an out of town Tesco near a village north of the city that has an all night pharmacy, then head back up to the patient (up to 30 miles). Plain daft for a rural area.

I've used the out of hours doctors a few times for the children, I've always gone there myself though. It's about 9 miles away, local gp is around 1 and a half miles away in the same village as me.

I would think that blood coming out of her ear was potentially serious though and would want to speak to an actual doctor rather than a receptionist, as is usually the case here. I'd probably call nhs direct and see what they thought first. They've been pretty good with me, I've called them a few times mainly for dd's asthma when she was really bad and they were excellent.

Blimey rural areas can be a nightmare by the sounds of it . I have to say that one of the reasons I have chosen not to live in a rural area now I am a parent is access to healthcare fast if you need it.

ah well this is the NHS my dears and you can thank the government for it not the GP's - but of course its far easier to bash those at the coal face than the high and mighties that have made the job nigh on impossible!
OP you have my sympathy been there done it, yes its crap BUT am afraid YABU!
Say there is ONE GP covering an area of maybe 20 000 patients (government cuts and so called money saving) and of those people 100 children were ill like yours with parents like you for whom it was difficult (not impossible) to take the portable child to them - if that ONE GP visted all those children taking an average of half hour per child (including travelling time) that is FIFTY hours of work - so now who sees the 90 year old genuinely housebound arthritic old lady with pneumonia, or the 60 year old terminally ill cancer patinet with incontrolled pain - not to mention the droves and droves of patients who are being seen at the OOH centre to "just get their flu checked" - because the government say every one has the RIGHT to see a GP - pity they are not prepared to pay enough if us to actaully see the demand !
Trust me from the other side it is not that simple, it is very hard to refuse a visit in a case like yours but sometimes commen snese and management of avialable resources has to be the priority (the greater good and all that)!!
And FWIW to some who posted before - mist GP's work very hard and earn no where near what the Daily Wail quotes, most of us are human and parents ourselves, and a fair few of us actaully manage to do an ok job despite all the crap the government, the press and the public throw at us!
OP I hope you and your DD are feeling better but you are directing your ire at the wrong target!
I will not be coming back as these GP bashing threads thouroughly depress me and I would quite like to go to work tomorrow not being pissed off that I am so badly thought of!!

I have to say my GP lives 3 doors down and we are good friends, so in extremis I would just knock on his door anyway. There is also a private GP service that could be with me in 15 minutes for £40 (cheaper than mucking about with taxis, frankly). But I do regret the way the formal arrangements have gone.

Nobody has bashed GPs on here. We have bashed the PCTs in reality, and their inappropriate planning. So chill, macdoodle.

Macdoodle I'm sure you do an excellent job. For what it's worth I love our gp's here, I think they're amazing and I absolutely trust their judgement. I'm very cynical and always question when I think I need to but they really do have my trust as they've earned it by being so good. I think they do an amazing job and are very personable with it too.

umm Boffin there is a fair amount of GP bashing on this thread re missed diagnosis, not visiting , not working hard enough, earning too much, waiting too long - trust me its there - is hard to chill when you work a 12 hour day and then get screamed and shouted at by patients because you dont do what they want when they want - because the government has so eroded GP!

Message withdrawn

I have to say I have always found the OOH service to be brilliant.dp has a rare autoimmune condition and is quite immunosupressed at times.Last night he got uncontrolled pain and was getting a high temp,I initially called nhs direct who then contacted OOH service,the doc rang back 5 mins later,visited within the hour and got an ambulance to him within the next hour.I have 2 small dc 1 with sn and when I explained I had no way of getting to the ooh place they were fab.(The doc said dp was the illest person he had seen that w/e so I didn't feel quite so guilty for dragging him out.)

When I had a kidney infection, was home from uni for the holidays and unregistered with a GP (I know, my bad), my mum's GP came out and prescribed strong painkillers and anti biotics for me on his lunch break. Please don't think that all GPs are heartless, they are human and no one wants to know that someone else is in pain when they can do something about it. The problem is that the doctors can't do much about it due to sheer volume. The gov needs to pay MORE doctors, not more to the doctors they already have who already do a great job for the most part.

i don't think people are bashing GPs more the system. I am sorry if you are taking it personally McD please don't. The GPS at my surgery are really excellent.

BuT the OOH service is by admission patchy (have seen reports about it I'm sure) and for things like breathing difficulties in the middle of the night in a baby/toddler for a parent it's very scary.

And I am afraid that the OOH GP I talked to on that night was dimissive about my DS1s earlier resp infection (he had spiked a really high temp) and dismissed it as teething. My instinct told me that was wrong and as I said I later found out that he was struck off for midiagnosis of pneumonia in a baby.

I can't count the no of times I would look at my DCs ribs (to see whther they were sucking in) or count no of resps per minute, when they got ill - willing them to just get to the morning when I could take them to GPs.

Perhaps there is a case for a more tailored paediatric 'rapid response OOH service' in manner that A&E services are sometimes segregated. Just a thought!!

Hey, McD, we criticised a missed diagnosis - you get errant professionals in any line of work. We discussed GPs going part-time - that is good for them and their families, but has effectively reduced the overall number of doctors nationally. Mainly we discussed the difficulties of making OOH services work properly, particularly for those in rural areas, and those with young families or elderly relatives. These are legitimate things to discuss and are not tantamount to GP bashing.

As for cutting GPs wages - doctors work bloody hard, harder than most. They spend more years at uni than most other professions (so more years NOT earning and getting into debt). They dont have an easy student life - med school is bloody hard. Junior doctors are dogs bodies and take home a hell of a lot less money than some on here seem to think even though their work/life balance is around 99%/1%. They aften work themselves into the ground sacrificing their health and they also get exposed to a great deal of violence and abuse from the general public - If they were not paid a decent amt then why would anyone in their right mind risk such a life-style?

The less you pay for a job the lower the quality of the applicants - certainly not the way I would want GP services to go. If you wanna make cuts somewhere, how about streamlining the admin and management teams?

Oh here we go. The competitive crap. I wondered how long it would take.

I did 8 years at uni, the last 4 years on £8k a year, and now work the equivalent of 6 days a week as opposed to my GP's 4 (he is off sailing near his second home the rest of the time). I commute three hours a day, he cycles ten minutes up the road.

I did 4 years after uni as a postdoc on slave wages.

I now earn 40% of what my GP does. We are the same age. I have more letters after my name than he does.

I do a job where quite a lot of my time I run a sort of surgery, i.e. students make appointments to see me to discuss things, and I do secondary referrals or suggest some sort of diagnosis and/or remedy based on my professional expertise. I do heaps of public sector paperwork. I am required to do a lot of ongoing professional development. I also train other people and publish research articles of international quality. I even do quality assurance for GP exams and things like that. I sometimes get abuse from students, the public and students' parents.

Admittedly I do not have to stick my hand up people's backsides. But other than that, really, how different are these jobs if you strip them down to a skillset?

Now if I was ruder I would be telling you to bugger off and spend your money. However this is MN so I will use the phrase "I beg to differ".

girls girls, kiss and make up please!!!

BM, im not sure if that picture in your profile is fascinating and lovely, or deeply disturbing

I am not kissing and making up until she admits academics had to teach her once so she could go off and earn all this dosh, and she appreciates them and their hard work too.

It is meant to be ironic, the picture. And discreet.

Hope you all feel well soon. But you must try and get her to doctors. x

You're trying hard with your arguments, boffin, but I do think the jobs are very different. What field are you in?