How to find an NHS GP you gel with?

[Imogen22]

We've moved to the UK only recently. The older of my two teenage boys is high functioning ASD and has ongoing health and mental health problems as well.

We signed up to a GP surgery that was meant to be good according to NHS choices site, but I am not finding them to be working for us. The doctors don't seem to be very understanding of the stress or complexity involved in managing my son's condition/s and the impact of this on our lives. The admin procedures seem to assume I can revolve my life around ringing them daily and at very particular times to see whether an appointment slot is free in the following week (is this normal?) and walking requests for repeat prescriptions into them and then again for collecting said prescription - just 2 x 1 hour detours every time...(is THIS normal?). They say their arrangements work for most of their patients, but they don't work for me, not at all. Also, now that I have questioned the practices a few times, I feel certain that they really loathe me, making them even less likely to provide good care.

I am just not confident in them and we really need a decent GP with my son's issues and my age related problems. Trouble is, the NHS site rates this surgery highly so I am really worried about what the other surgeries in the area must be like. I know that technically we can go and sign up at another surgery ....but will that be a frying pan to fire arrangement, and I understand that the paperwork transfer arrangements can take quite a few weeks so we would be in limbo during that time. Is there any way of trying out a different NHS GP before transferring to the practice? Otherwise it's surely going in blind??

I can't afford to go private, until I'm working we can't afford much at all and getting work is being delayed by struggling with unresolved health issues.

Any advice much appreciated.

Regarding repeat scripts ask your practice there is a big move to you emailing requests and them emailing your chosen pharmacy the script in a bid to save money/paper.
Appointments many surgeries now have on line appointment systems.
Having said this I find that the actual quality of the GP you see is by far and away more important than the admin side of the practice.

Tbh I think you do have to manage your expectations regarding admin. There is no one system that suits everyone so best thing is to learn the system in place and abide by it. In my case it's either making the appointment well in advance or putting my finger on the phone button on the stroke of 8am. I am very happy with my surgery.

Regarding finding a good GP, IME it's best to ask around. Once your son has settled maybe you will get to know others in a similar position who might be able to recommend. And then of course, no one person suits everyone. If you join a large practice you will, in time find someone you gel with. Make friends with the receptionists and ask them to recommend someone,too.

It's not that easy but it is possible. You need a good team of people around you in your (and my) situation and it does take time to achieve that.

Good luck.

pharmacies can now do the whole prdering/collecting prescriptions thing but asking round (any asd support groups near you?) is your best bet. ask people in a similar situation to you though.

Thanks for those tips ladies. I agree that the quality of GP is more important than the admin system. Problem is the GPs themselves at this place seem very off-hand. I am dreading asking them to carry out a personal examination or to discuss my rapidly developing depression with them. There is an ASD support group in a nearby town but so far all these dates have clashed with non-negotiable appointments to do with the children. There is an online booking system but it doesn't enable appointments to be made more than a few days in advance and the spots seem always to be taken. Likewise, the online prescription system could work if the scripts were actually loaded into the system...

So, just to clarify, it seems that to find a new GP who might be more suitable, I need to register with a different practice (maybe after several conversations with reception staff) and wait for records to be transferred across and then make an appointment to meet the GPs in that practice. As you have suggested I may wait on doing this until I've got some recommendations from locals with similar conditions in their families as that's a lot of bureaucracy to go through if not pretty certain of more understanding assistance.

Just to add.....don't write off a while practise based on one GP. Often there are 4 or 5 (London) to choose from. At ours, there is one I refused I see or let any of my family see. She is negligent and rude. But there is also a really excellent GP that I choose if we have anything complex to deal with. As well as a couple of just average ones who are fine with everyday normal stuff.

As far as admin goes, they are all a bit of a nightmare. The trick is to fully understand how it works at the practise and then use it to your own advantage. So for instances,to get an appointment at ours can take weeks of you are planning ahead. But they will do a same day one if you really need it urgently. But you have to be first in line when they open or be prepared to do redial on your phone to get through as soon as they open. Leave it any longer and the slots will be gone.

Also when you really need an appointment, phone up to get an on-the-day one if you haven't been able to book - this means you have to say "yes" when they ask "is this urgent?", and it is, even if it wouldn't have been a week ago, so don't hold back from doing that.

I think all GPs are supposed to be offering online repeat prescriptions now or at least having a similar arrangement with a pharmacy, so hopefully you can reduce your personal admin a bit that way.

Imogen can I ask where you have come from? There might be a bit of expectation management here around the difference in health care systems. I live in the US and am constantly struck by how my, in my interactions with health professionals here, I am treated like an intelligent participant in decisions regarding my health. Booking appointments is easy and works around my schedule. That's not how it felt in the UK (at any of the surgeries I was a patient at). That's not to say that the quality of care wasn't excellent - if often was - but because of the demands on the doctors' time, the service is necessarily designed around making things as easy as possible for the practice to see as many people, as efficiently as possible (as you have seen with the booking appts procedure).

The NHS is a great resource but one that doesn't have the time or resources to operate in the same manner as a health system that is funded through insurance schemes. There are some things you can do, as posters above have suggested, to make the system work better for you. But fundamentally, there's also a degree of acceptance that a healthcare system, that is free at the point of access but which needs to keep costs down, has more restrictions on the flexibility it can offer than other systems.