What are GPs actually doing during all this time ?

[VivaMiltonKeynes]

We were discussing this . In our surgery they have e consult online and you get a call back . On the couple of times this has occurred it's not even a doctor at our practice - it sounds like a service they use and it is really appalling . They don't even seem to have read your notes . The nurses are run off their feet doing the usual blood tests, flu shots etc but what are all the GPs doing ?

I don't know exactly what they're doing in our surgery but I had a very quick call back when I phoned about my daughter, antibiotics prescribed and picked up in Tesco within an hour and a half from my original request for a call. All our repeat prescriptions are dealt with very quickly so I can't fault what they're doing.

In my surgery (where I work)
Gps- e- consults over 50 a day
Diary slots
Emergency call backs
Test results
Referrals
Booking scans/ X-rays
Blood forms
Home visits
F2f appts (that they book)
Baby checks
Post natal checks
Prescriptions
Flu clinics (including weekends this year)
Adhoc calls from either patients, consultants and paramedics

Admin team
Sorting and putting the econsults on each gp clinic
Call backs for admin
Re printing blood forms and letters
Prescriptions
Booking all nurse appts
Ringing chemists for people that decide they can't do this themselves
Chasing results from hospitals
Opening post (we have 3-4 deliveries a day)
Sorting letters and scanning them onto records
Filing
Scanning
Sorting paper records
Sending and receiving paper records off
Email correspondence

Just my role
All admin as above (this is shared each day with colleagues)
Registrations
Children safeguarding (making sure all children's records are read coded correctly if they are children In need, in care, fostered etc
Liasing with the safeguarding team
Learning disability reviews (doing a search for this bracket and inviting them in which in itself is a whole different job)
Sorting coils and implants
I've currently just enrolled in a volunteer position for something else which has added more to my work load
Read coding
Summarising
This list is just a 1 days work.

So yer not a lot like a lot of people have said. Idiots

Oh and private letters, sicknotes that the doctors do and then hand to us to send or the patient can collect.

[quote Bluepolkadots42]@sleeplessinderbyshire can I ask why majority of surgeries are doing very limited face to face when other sectors back up and running as normal... i.e the education sector?
You mention you work in an A&E department sometimes too which is all face to face, so why can't you work as normal face to face at your surgery/practice?[/quote]
Because sick people don't walk into a school, shops etc when their ill. As soon as our doors open people just walk in when they don't really need to. We would have people coming into surgery saying they don't think they have Covid but have the symptoms. We have pregnant women coming in for appointments and new born baby's coming in for the imms and health checks, cancer patients coming for injections. If the doors are open we can't monitor who is entering the building when these patients are in. A lot of illnesses can be dealt with over the phone/video the ones who can't are being triaged by the Gp and then invited in. At certain times when this doesn't conflict with other appointments.

@RosesAndHellebores

I agree with Xenia. The lens of teachers and HCP should not be blurred by ignorance of the precariat.

I have had to take a 12.5% pay cut this year and my organisation has had no choice but to make 15% of staff redundant. Despite the pay cut I work nearly 60 ours every week just to tread water.

Generally pay cuts happen when your business is not doing more business than usual though in the private sector. Many private businesses are also giving bonuses out this year. NHS contracts allow you to be downgraded by one grade as a result of restructuring (about 15% depending on grade). This happened widely after the banking crisis along with the pay freeze. I am sympathetic to everyone who has lost out but if you believe redundancies and pay reductions don’t happen in the public sector you’re not correct. Have they happened since March- yes I do know of a redundancy but probably not on a large scale. Will They happen after the threat of covid has gone and we aren’t relying on staff so much, yes I fully expect so.

@FurrySlipperBoots

I found it funny that my doctor's surgery has a poster on the door saying: 'Do you feel unwell? Do you have a temperature? Do you have a dry persistent cough? DON'T COME IN!' I mean if you can't enter the doctors because you feel unwell, that could be a problem!

There's another poster too reading: 'Need medical assistance? Go home and call the surgery from there'. Let's hope there's no one having chest pain then huh?

I would hope if someone was having chest pain they wouldn't be going to the Gp surgery but to the hospital instead 🤔

@winechateauxjoy

What are dentists doing??? I can't get an NHS dentist - it's impossible in this region, so I am on denplan which costs me £20 per month. I have two check ups a year for that. Since covid they are not seeing anyone for checkups. I have not had my teeth checked since Septmeber 2019, yet the direct debit goes to them every month. They are taking my money and I am receiving nothing in return.

What worries me ids that when covid restrictions are listed they will have a huge backlog to deal with so who knows when it will be when I get an appointment. I have had just one letter off them in all this time. I cannot cancel as it is the only way I can get onto a dentists lists here. My dentist must be laughing all the way to the bank.

I see a private dentist and they are in action again. Like you I pay approx 23 Pounds a month for 2 check ups and 3 cleans a year . They are not using machines for cleans and are hand scaling whereas my H uses an NHS dentist and they have the special machine in the room . (Sorry don't know it's official name)

I’ve seen my private dentist. I don’t pay for denplan though, I pay per appointment,so maybe that makes a difference

A lot of GP practices will be a lot busier soon once the covid vaccination programme kicks off. They have been allowed to choose whether to do it (they have had to apply and will just have heard whether their ‘site’ has been approved) and will then get paid over £25 per patient vaccinated in addition to their usual income.
I’m guessing that nurses (and even non-clinical staff) will be the ones actually doing the vaccinations though. The GPs don’t have to do it themselves to get paid.

I’ve never understood why people bang on about ‘no privatisation of the NHS’ but don’t realise that primary care is already very much privatised.

Sod all in mine. I have requested a few appointments and been dealt with over the phone. They refused to seem my daughter for a ear ache due to the fact she had a temperature. We eventually managed to be seen by out of hours and her eardrum burst on the way to fetch the prescription.
My mums surgery is just as bad. My dad sadly passed away in August from a brain tumour. For 4 weeks in June My mum fought for an appointment as his speech and balance went very suddenly. They simply kept posting out UTI tests. Finally they saw the gp from across the room. No physical examination. The gp told him to walk with an extra stick!!! No mri request was done.
A week later lockdown ended and I took him to a and e. 2 days later a tumour was diagnosed. It took 4 weeks.
My dad was in his early 70s

I work in education and I am required to work in a classroom with vulnerable pupils face to face.

To be fair to my surgery all our repeats have been like clockwork

These posts make me so cross, not sure in genuine or a troller..

If not true.. take a dive of a cliff..
If true ... if you don't like the response and actions for your current GP.. move.. job done. I did with mine because of a nasty narcissist receptionist who started to diagnose me.. that c**t can smoke her way to lung cancer as far as I'm concerned.. she made me look else where after having the same GP for 15 years.

But I think she did me a favour, as my new GP is amazing... I feel truly blessed.. I went into emergency A&E for prolapsed disc this week a few days, and he called me without prompt to see I was ok and a check up.. at the age of 52.. I will say that's a first...

Maybe when I was younger but not these days..

Viva.. sadly again the same with dentist..

I've had to visit my NHS dentist 4 times during lock down.. because mainly of sudden broken teeth.. never before.. am early 50's..

All of a sudden everything is falling apart..
But I'm able to get emergency appointments with both my new GP of 8 months, previous 16 years and b4 that one due to location .. what 30 years.. from
Birth...

Dentist.. yes the same NHS for years..

Luckily in our great country if you're not happy find another. Go on this new app.. nextdoor and ask your neighbours for recommendations...

I was of the era our teeth were butchered in the 70's of that eras dentists to get their NHS bOnuses.. let them all rot in hell!

Ask for recommendations etc.. and make an appointment effort yourself to find help..

@Xenia

The one thing we can agree on is teachers and GPs have continued to be paid all year whilst large parts of the population of the UK have no jobs at all and no furlough money or have had to accept 20% pay cuts for even more hours and plenty because they have savings have no universal credit entitlement either - all because our aim is to keep hospitals no fuller than in a normal winter even if we destroy the nation in the process.

Oh sorry I do apologise. I'll hand back some of my wage (teacher), shall I? Because you don't think I should be paid for the work I do. You're lovely aren't you. I'm glad I don't teach your kids. I always like the kids I teach and would never treat them differently if their parents are arseholes. However parents being arseholes does made the home - school relationship more tricky. On the whole I recommend not being an arsehole to the people who care for your kids

Again, I won't say who my dentist is, as he's so accommodating and still takes NHS patients, and the more who know about him. The less likely I will get an appointment. Yup shoot me, will share anything other than my access to my dentist of to date 26 years..!!
Yes he has been mine and not butchered my jaw and teeth and have prob only had repair fillings in that whole time, never new.

That's sums it up for me re the nasty carvery dentists these days, in fact the last 40 years..

I still think this is a troll post FYI...

Well, right now I’m working the first of 3 nightshifts in the GP out-of-hours service (currently have no patients so having a cup of tea and a quick break). I also spend some of my days in the community COVID assessment hub. My colleagues in GP practices are working their butts off telephone triaging patients, and doing all the usual admin stuff while gearing up to dole out COVID vaccines.

I can’t believe this narrative that we are doing fuck all is still running. Sigh.

Things seem to be running more smoothly for patients at our surgery, we get a call back and then send photos/videos. Prescriptions are then sent electronically to the pharmacy and we collect when we get a text. Repeats can also be requested over the phone and online.

Previously, appointments were like hen's teeth, prescriptions were never actually sent, repeats could only be ordered by going to the surgery and filling in a form. A huge process for everything.

I hope my surgery carry on like this! The only downside is that an appointment phone call is given as a 2 hour window which is difficult when working.

Well they won't be sat throwing a baseball at a wall and trying to catch it. There is a million different aspects to their jobs and no doubt they will be trying to do 3-4 of them at the same time! Honestly!

When you read threads like this it’s no wonder the U.K. has a problem in recruiting GP’s.

If true ... if you don't like the response and actions for your current GP.. move.. job done.

No, it’s not always that that easy. Friends report similar issues in other local surgeries. So no, it’s not just move and job done. Plus, they shouldn’t be able to have their receptionists talk to people like they’re a piece of shit and not see the patients that they’re paid to see.

BungleandGeorge
You're right.
I know of redundancies in several schools over the last few years, especially as schools have found themselves picking up many other services that were previously in linked professions e.g. CAMHS and social services.
There seems to be a lot of bitterness directed at public sector workers, especially during Covid, where people like to turn public sector works into a group to direct their anger towards instead of the government for its handling of the crisis.

I think many of the problems people encounter are coming from receptionists and practise management rather than the actual doctors/nurses. The HCPs I see are fine, it's just become virtually impossible to actually see one.

"When you read threads like this it’s no wonder the U.K. has a problem in recruiting GP’s."

It certainly has a problem recruiting a lot of good ones.

@Rowan8

Again, I won't say who my dentist is, as he's so accommodating and still takes NHS patients, and the more who know about him. The less likely I will get an appointment. Yup shoot me, will share anything other than my access to my dentist of to date 26 years..!! Yes he has been mine and not butchered my jaw and teeth and have prob only had repair fillings in that whole time, never new.

That's sums it up for me re the nasty carvery dentists these days, in fact the last 40 years..

I still think this is a troll post FYI...

I can assure you I am not a troll . We live in a large village and tbh the care from them has been pretty awful since we moved here . They take forever to make up prescriptions and when you go to collect they rake through endless boxes until they finally find it . Most of the team are part time young female doctors. It has only got worse with Covid . You cannot call or book an appointment online and the telephone rings out even when you are Number 1 caller . As I said before I don't know if they are using some system to deal with their e consults but the 2 doctors I have had call me to "review" my HRT recently don't know me , know nothing about how long I have been on it and have talked nonsense. I sent in a letter about HRT and it was not put on my file. I would love to go back to my previous GP in a nearby town that I was with for 33 years and I will look into that to see if it is possible .

Instead of coming on the thread to tell us the crap care some of us here are fully aware that we are definitely experiencing is just 'GP bashing', it would be good if some of the GPs being defensive here would wake up to the fact that if they are working flat out and we are still dangling on the end of a phone, then the problem is probably to do with infrastructure and planning, which they are much better placed to influence - at least at practice level - than we are. For many practices, a lot of these access problems pre-date Covid, and if GPs, particularly partners, had addressed them then, instead of reflexively blaming patients, we might all be having a better time of it now.

Just as one example, a lot of practices have been jimmying round with appointments systems for years in a ridiculously ineffectual manner that completely failed to consider the way real people (outside the NHS bubble) live and work. Now that demand is sky high and physical access to surgery buildings a problem, the systems in place are not fit for practice. Well, what a surprise. Those of us who have never been able to sit in a phone queue for an hour are no better able to now. Those of us who always found it hard to physically get to the surgery in working hours are not surprised that everyone is struggling with the new regime. This was not rocket science, people. If you had given a decent amount of thought to all the patients whose needs you were overlooking all along, you would have more efficient systems in place now. Most people appreciate GPs work hard, but mistakes have been made. You could at least own it.