I can see a dentist, an osteopath and have an x ray. Why can't I see my GP face to face?

[pinkprosseco]

Where I am Registered the GP only does telephone triage and almost never invited anyone in for face to face appointment whether that's a persistent cough (not Covid), abdominal pains or potential arthritis, a ? Lesion on the skin etc etc. I feel that long after other key workers have gone back to normal, GPS who we depend on as a first line of advice and diagnosis, are shirking responsibility. Surely the missed diagnosis the BBC and other current affairs websites are referring to are only going to get worse. Why isn't there a mandate they return to work properly. Anyone else?

As someone married to a GP I can confirm they operate on a much higher level than the best senior nurse.
The U.K. system for training GP’s is sought after by other countries. We need many more of them to provide a proper service but ever increasing numbers are leaving. The population has grown, less GP’s so a more limited service.

And as for the GPs referred to above who 'miraculously' haven't caught Covid yet - that's because they don't treat any Covid patients (or many patients of any kind face-to-face)

A senior nurse I know has caught every variant going in the last 15 months. That nurse saved hundreds of lives by their own reckoning in those months. Has many niggling after effects as you might expect after several bouts of Covid.

No choice but to get exposed to Covid every shift at very high viral loads. And then infect their families.

Advanced practitioners are the way forward.

The UK system actually relies heavily on importing GPs because the current system is very costly and inefficient and doesn't produce enough GPs at the end of it. Then those GPs want to work office hours mon-fri. So the out-of-hours GP centres are largely staffed by imported GPs and senior nurses.

@Its90minutestonight

I'm seeing an NHS physio f2f.

Me too

Because those other practitioners are (mainly) private, and want to have and retain customers who could go elsewhere if they're unhappy with their service. GPs will be paid regardless of whether they provide a good service or not.

My daughter ended up in hospital for three days because the GP wouldn’t see her. She kept telling the GP it wasn’t a viral infection and they just wouldn’t listen to her. Angry doesn’t cover it.

It wasn't the doctor that was the problem as I knew as soon as I spoke to him he would say come in, which is exactly what happened. Now being referred urgently. But I couldn't get past the receptionist and was trying since before Christmas. Since then I had two dentist appointments and thought I must be able to see my doctor now. It was still hard work getting an appointment and I had to go through my medical history to get there. It was awful, I was almost in tears on the phone, and then she was asking me is it urgent and I really didn't know what to say. It's taken four months just to see my doctor. Now I have suspected skin cancer, I just hope that it'll all be fine. I tried to take a photo to email over but the lesion is small and couldn't get a clear picture. It had to be seen. My doctor said that photos are just not good enough for some things.

GP here. We have some face to face appointments available to book but we are very limited by space in the waiting room, we have guidelines to follow about social distancing and many people who come for an appointment are sick or vulnerable. In my area the community “hot” hubs for assessing people with COVID symptoms in the first and second wave were staffed almost entirely by GP’s, myself among them.
Demand has gone up exponentially in primary care in the last few months, and in the health service as a whole. My surgeries are ridiculously busy and always overrun. I work directly for the NHS in a locally managed practice so it’s a slightly different situation but I don’t understand why people always blame “GP’s” when surgeries are busy and demand doesn’t meet supply. Sure there may be the occasional partner who doesn’t want to reduce their drawing by employing extra staff but I haven’t seen it happen. More often it’s people unable to recruit (perhaps because family medicine is an unpopular speciality with med students, I wonder why???) or they don’t have the money to recruit extra staff (particularly in deprived areas where extra cost of providing care is not properly accounted for) Please remember primary care carries out circa 90% of patient contact in the UK for around 10% of the funding.
Allied health professionals are a highly valuable part of the primary care team but if they could do the job of a GP as well for less money don’t you think they already would be? GP’s are actually expected to manage a lot of very complex high risk patients in the community and nurses who will do that kind of work are unusual, usually based in one specialist area and anyway expensive as well due to high levels of experience.

Most of my hospital colleagues are still carrying out a significant proportion of work remotely. And again all doctors and nurses at times make mistakes, don’t communicate as well as we should we’re only human. It’s only GP’s I see where one person’s bad experience leads to slating the profession as a whole. For example many people have bad experiences in A&E but articles slating A&E docs are rare.

I really believe that if primary care in the UK collapses the NHS is in deep trouble. But maybe I’m wrong and we’re not as useful as I think. GP’s don’t make these decisions so please write to your MP and tell them either to fund primary care better or not bother if that’s what you think. If your MP thinks the GPs are actually lazy I’m sure most would be delighted to have them sit in and see how much we deal with on a typical day. I would certainly be very happy to have a politician shadow me for a day.

The constant GP bashing is so dispiriting and demoralising. The daily mail do it constantly and now mumsnet seems to be in on it too.

Everything @Rowanapp just said plus Covid vaccine clinics. I was volunteering for these on evenings and weekends but totally dispirited now, I'm done with it.

Im not a GP basher, my ex husband was a GP and I know how very hard he worked, including having terminally ill patients ring him day or night even when he wasn’t on call.
What upsets me about our local surgery is the attitude. They seem to hate patients. I had an appointment booked for a BP review in May 2020, obviously I didn’t expect that appointment to happen due to covid.
What I didn’t expect was a text telling me the appointment was cancelled
YOUR APPOINTMENT ON ......DATE IS CANCELLED, DO NOT ATTEND YOUR APPOINTMENT YOU WILL NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THE SURGERY DO NOT ATTEND. (Their caps and their lack of punctuation and grammar).
totally over the top, and frankly, very rude.

Sorry to be dense, but what is an "e-consult"?

Our GP surgery was late to offer the ability to book appointments online, very limited availability - and they shut that down when Covid started, so now the only option is to phone the Receptionist. All they seemed to be able to offer were telephone appointments in a morning/afternoon long time slot. {Yes, I am aware the guidance has just changed.} But I would have loved the opportunity to complete a pre-appointment form or exchange emails directly with the GP - telephone appointments was all they could offer.

Abraxan - that’s a non story. F2f appointments have been offered throughout based on clinical need, not want. Or as mentioned above, if difficulty hearing etc. I don’t think anything will change from Monday. And long may it continue.

Current system has actually worked so much better for me. Writing down everything for the Gp to read and then a phone appointment same day or within a few days is brilliant. Before covid there was a dermatology system where they emailed suspicious looking things so they could then call in the ones that looked like cancer more or reassure so people were seen quicker.
Our GP will see you if after triage you need to be examined. I really hope it continues as so much can be done over the phone and I’ve had better access actually. Also the amount of people waiting in a waiting room etc for a quick turn around is the difficulty, osteopath appointments are an hour, so no full waiting room same with the dentist and they are only seeing people on a reduced service with cleaning in between. GPS have actually shown to have done more consultations that ever adding up phone and face to face as they can “see” people more in a day.

My hospital appointments have still been booked in for the phone for the end of the year, and I’m fine with that. They can get through people speedier too.

EggysMom, e-consult is a web-based triage system. You pick a broad category of ailments, answer a load of questions about your symptoms and what you want to get out of your consultation. I assume that if you give a red flag answer to any of the questions it directs you to head for A&E, but otherwise the GP reviews it and then sends you a message to expect a call back between time X and time Y, (or presumably to come into the surgery if appropriate). GP can also ask you to send photos/BP readings etc over a secure link.

It’s not perfect and obviously only works if the patient has internet access and is reasonably confident and literate. But for that large proportion of the population it’s not bad. It has the major advantage that GP appointments can be allocated by the GP themself according to need, not by the receptionist or by whoever manages to dial their phone quickest at 8am.

I’m actually holding back sending DS to nursery as I think it’s not a responsible thing to do given he will likely get every bug going and primary care basically doesn’t exist in our area.

I don't think this is all gps - I was pleasantly surprised to have had an online form consultation and to have had my daughter called in to be seen in person yesterday following this... sorry u haven't been able to when needed.
This was for an ear infection

@ExpulsoCorona I’m not mistaking kindness with incompetence at all. I’m not sure how you interpreted my post to mean that.

My point was that I’d previously gone to the GP with very clear signs of peri which were affecting my life in a very negative way but was fobbed off. But when I had a phone appointment, the fobbing off didn’t happen and I was helped immediately.

My point was that pre-COVID, established processes (rightly or wrongly) had to happen prior to treatment and sometimes these processes were unnecessarily awkward, inflexible and distressing for the patient to have to go through to get treatment.

It’s been well documented that women with peri or meno symptoms have been discouraged from asking for HRT and either told that it’s depression and given anti-depressants or just fobbed off as I was.

I think it depends on how well the surgery has been able to adapt. Mine has been on telephone triage way before Covid so they have really just carried on as they were but perhaps being slightly less open door than they were. All the conversations I've had were fine for over the phone and when DD had a rash we sent in photos and the doctor did say we were welcome to make a walk a face to face appointment if it hadn't improved in the morning after trying the prescription.

I've never struggled to get a phone call same day (and you can ring at the start of afternoon surgery and get a call later that afternoon!) unlike my last practice that was traditional try to get through in the morning or no chance.

So I guess what I'm saying is I don't doubt a lot of surgeries have struggled to adapt and find a way that works for both them and their patients, which is poor, but when they do get it right it has the potential to be really good as long as the access to face to face is up to scratch alongside the phone triage.

F2f appointments have been offered throughout based on clinical need, not want. Or as mentioned above, if difficulty hearing etc. I don’t think anything will change from Monday. And long may it continue

No. They haven't. Not in my part of the NHS.

@Rowanapp

Most of my hospital colleagues are still carrying out a significant proportion of work remotely. And again all doctors and nurses at times make mistakes, don’t communicate as well as we should we’re only human. It’s only GP’s I see where one person’s bad experience leads to slating the profession as a whole. For example many people have bad experiences in A&E but articles slating A&E docs are rare.

I really believe that if primary care in the UK collapses the NHS is in deep trouble. But maybe I’m wrong and we’re not as useful as I think. GP’s don’t make these decisions so please write to your MP and tell them either to fund primary care better or not bother if that’s what you think. If your MP thinks the GPs are actually lazy I’m sure most would be delighted to have them sit in and see how much we deal with on a typical day. I would certainly be very happy to have a politician shadow me for a day.

The constant GP bashing is so dispiriting and demoralising. The daily mail do it constantly and now mumsnet seems to be in on it too.

Of course not all GPs are the same and some posters here are very happy with the service they have received but fundamentally there is a problem with what is being provided for others. It's not about GP bashing but raising concern that the system isn't working for everyone. I started the thread because I genuinely don't understand why I can't see a GP f2f (not for just anything but for specific issues that I believe would benefit from that kind of appointment). I'm not convinced by any response here that f2f shouldn't be on offer now, alongside remote consultations when that suits people. The threads are started because people are worried about the service not to GP bash.

Our GP was moving to remote consultations before Covid even came along. I think this is part of a wider plan.

I always stuck up for Gps. However I have now lost all faith despite the fact I was a low weight and being prescribed fortitude. Around 4 years ago gained weight , without duet change. I was on my feet all day at work and went to gym 6 days a week.

I got an endocrine referral. He wouldn't do anything as I never had stretch marks.
Everything I'd bring it up a medication would be blamed. I'd stop them and no change.

I'm now td my liver is enlarged. My Gp has insisted on a gp appt which finally had. She's going to tell them my diet cannot be causing the problem and I do more exercise than the daily recommended.

No idea what my Gp will do now. Finally maybe trust what I say and do tests that they've refused.

I blame them for me having an enlarged liver. I'm very close to formally complaining through an outside agency.

I think maybe if the new triage is to be the way forward we need a consistent approach across the board.

We only have phone triage. You have to call at 8:30am and then someone will call you back anytime that day, no choice of times.

We don't have an online option.
We can't send in a written description of what's wrong, or photographs of rashes, etc
We can't select an appointment time slot.

It needs to be a workable system for all and currently it isn't in many areas.

Our gp surgery has always been a hit behind the times with stuff. It's only very recently we've had patient access apps but even then all I can do is order a repeat prescription through it. For a brief few weeks, just before Covid hit, we could use it to make routine/non same day appointments. That's now stopped yet could easily be set up even if replaced with a telephone call rather than f2f.

I’m actually holding back sending DS to nursery as I think it’s not a responsible thing to do given he will likely get every bug going and primary care basically doesn’t exist in our area.

Surely the vast vast majority of bugs in kids don’t require seeing/speaking to a Dr?