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...!

I'm a lecturer. I am just feeling very poor and undervalued at the moment, hence my wrath. My GP's purchase of the boat and second home the moment the new contracts came in did it for me, I'm afraid . I know jealousy is beneath me and all that. But he really doesn't work as hard as any of the other professionals I know around here.

I'd picked up you were an academic, just wondered what subject.

Sorry you're feeling undervalued. Doctors are like anyone else. Some work very hard, some cruise along a little.

Dont really want to go into this Boffin - but if you made a mistake in your job say just a small tiny one - would someone die, someones child/mother/grandmother - would they???
Try living with that 50 times day be my guest - I earn every penny of my money - and am as far from having a second house and a boat as you could possibly imagine!

Pinkdolly - how are you doing now? I hope things are better for you.

On Xmas eve we took DD to the doctors, she was screaming that her neck was hurting her. Doc thought it might be tonsillitis, but didn't prescribe anything as she didnt have the coating on her throat. We left with the pain meds, but she ended up getting worse on Xmas day and boxing day, on boxing day we had to ring nhs direct again, then were sent to the walk in center, an hour and a half later, we were directed to a&e where we ended up staying for hours for a really bad case of tonsillitis and dehydration.

Was very frustrating.

I hope things are now better for the original poster.

I just wanted to say the following,

I'm a GP, I'm now parttime but when i was fulltime I was earning much less than 100,000 - the oft quoted average figure is pulled up massively by a few high earners (noone I know!). On a normal day I will see 34 patients in the practice and a couple of home visits. I spend more time sorting out the paperwork for each patient than seeing them and easily do over 50 hours a week even when not doing oncall. The partners in the practice do much more and are often there until 10/11 at night dealing with the business side of the practice. When I finally get home I grab a bite to eat (I take sandwiches to work but rarely get to eat them) and start studying as research moves on faster than we can keep up with it.

From the older doctors I don't know a single one that wouldn't go back to the old way of doing things if it was possible. it's not a great life now, we are struggling with the mortgage on a little flat. But there are good bits and I love getting to know my patients.

If the OP was my patient I'd have loved to have spent a minimum of 30minutes coming out to see her, spending some time with her and her daughter and getting things sorted for her. Nice and easy case, no chronic and complicated health problems, not abusive or threatening, no drugs, alcohol or psychosis - It would be the nicest and easiest case of my day and that was what I signed up for.

The reality is much different.

There may be a wait for a home visit, but that wait may be indefinate if more medically urgent things come up while you are waiting. Coming to the surgery or OOH base is often the quickest and safest way for you to be seen. If I could I would bring the hospital to the patient, the pharmnacist, a bunch of carers (cos flu is horrid) and make them a cup of tea before I left.

We physically can't manage with the demands of the service and the expectations of people today (did any of us ever go the doctor for a cold???!!! 6 of my patients yesterday were young healthy adults with a mild cold!)

Petition the government, write to the MPs, but it's the managers and paperwork that needs to be less, we need more doctors not less and the money to employ them at a fair rate for the hours. The governments tactics are to destroy the NHS by stealth - don't let them win.

Doctors have to make life and death decisions, in some cases, every day of their working lives. They deserve their pay and more imo.

However, re the OP, I do think it is disgusting that our health service does not provide someone to go out to the OP's daughter in the circumstances she described. No the situation was not life or death, but the OP was ill, pregnant, caring for another ill child and alone. What more does she need for a home visit to be available?

This shoudlnt be about what doctors do or dont do, thankfully ummadam, most doctors are probably like you - i know mine was (hes retired now but went out of his wat to reassure me when i was ill - on spec phone calls to make sure i ok etc) and my new doctor is equally as good. I DO have a "friend" who is a GP with her own practice and i swear to god, she moans if she doesnt get to come home and ride her horse for three hours a day and does a four day week anyway. But tis like any profession, you get the good and you get the bad.

I couldnt deal with the responsibility of being a doc, i wanted to be a vet but didnt persuie it, having worked with vets and seen the stress, im so glad i didnt

I am an education lecturer. I do take the point about life and death decisions, but I would also agree with what other posters say, you get good and bad GPs - some work harder then others, some miss diagnoses through laziness or incompetence, and many (fortunately) don't.

I think I speak for all of us when I say we admire the good ones, and we have a general sense of the levels of commitment involved for many GPs, but often our personal experiences of healthcare are more patchy and sometime even inadequate. I also think many of us ration our own healthcare, mindful of the NHS's limited resources, so when we do ask for something that any reasonable person would think OK, and get pushed back, it can be quite upsetting and confusing.

So I am not GP bashing, really!

Any type of job you care to mention will have lazy people in it, whether private, public or non-profit sector. We just don't hear so much moaning about those in provate and non-profit. And whereas we might think a request is reasonable, I do tend to fall on the side of those in the job who have the full picture and make the tough decisions.

Reading the op's situation, although I can understand her misery, I would fully expect the surgery to refuse a home visit.

In the time it takes me to do even a quick consultation as a home visit, it may take 30-60 minutes depending on travelling time to and from my base and then having to go back and write it all up in the notes. In surgery, I get allocated 10 minutes per consultation. Therefore, I can see 1 manky ear as a home visit or up to 6 in the surgery in the same time. Its about best use of resources. Children have the added bonus of being reasonably portable (even if it is a nuisance sometimes).

GP home visits are warranted sometimes, especially if someone is genuinely bedbound or terminally ill. Not everyone who can't get to the surgery needs 999.

We certainly still do plenty of home visits for those who need them. However, it is impossible to have the same equipment available and offer the same standard of care as at the surgery. The GPs at my surgery saw 14 patients as home visits yesterday (which we only just coped with between us)- all of whom were elderly or terminally ill with poor mobility and genuinely too ill to come to us.