Doctor's appointment rant

[yellocain]

Hi, I am new to these wall so I hope I have posted this in the right place. Please forgive me if I have not.

Anyway, I have just come off the phone from trying to book an appointment to see my doctor. Now, I am not the kind of person who visits the doctor on a regular basis and can count on one hand how many times I have seen the doctor in the last 5 years. I only tend to make an appointment if I am worried about something.
So here is my gripe.
I live in Creigiau and wanted to book an appointment to see any doctor as I am worried about a chest discomfort which is affecting the way that I breath. It is as almost as if my heart is stopping momentarily lol. I know it isn't but that is only way as I can describe it.
So.. I call and speak to the formidable policing dept, (reception) to arrange to see the doctor and informed her of my concerns.
"The 20th March is the earliest any doctor can see you" was her reply.
Unless I am mistaken, Creigiau is not a huge place but it must be the only doctors surgery for miles around!!! Four or Five doctors fully booked up with appointments for a whole month in a village!! Am I missing something here!! The times I do go to the doctors, I am only in there for 5 or 6 mins max! I spend more time in the waiting room!! So if the average appointment last for 15 mins, that's four an hour. That's 28 in a 7 hour day! For a surgery of 4 or 5 doctors, that's over a 100 patients a day, 500 a week!! I know it's not a true estimate but you can see where I am coming from. How can I not get an appointment within a month!!
I just simply fail to see how this is the case. I know doctors are extremely busy but..... I could be dead in a month!!! :)))

Phone and say you have chest pain. Which is perfectly true and may get you an emergency appt.

Thanks bigbluebus. Yes they did give me an earlier appointment for the one in church village but still on the 17th march which is the Friday before. I just can't get my head around waiting a month to see your local GP. Nowhere else in the developed world is this acceptable. Just because it's the NHS doesn't make it acceptable.

If a patient phones the surgery and they say they have chest pain the Receptionist will tell them to phone for an ambulance because that is an emergency and for A&E attention not the GP's.

Lol saucery. I said that already and told the receptionist that i suffer with arrythmia and that I had irregular chest pains. I may as well have told her that I dialled the wrong number..

Troysmammy i don't think we should bother the emergency services for something that may turn out to be cryonic ingestion.

How long have you had this irregular heart beat and chest discomfort for?

If in doubt and you are worried about your heart 999 or A+E are appropriate.
There is really not much a GP surgery can do.

Wrt reception staff: I would argue that theirs is the hardest job in any surgery. If there are no appointments to give away, there are none to give away.
If you need to be seen urgently, ask for an emergency appointment - most surgeries will make contingencies for that.
If you are unhappy about how you were dealt with speak to the practice manager. We record every phone call so we can learn from difficult situations. It can be very interesting for both sides to listen to what was said and how it was said at the time.

Fwiw, we give away 60+ appointments every day + additional emergency appointments + 20 bookable appointments. It is not enough, but there is only so much time/mental capacity/other resources we have.
You being in with the doctor for 5 or 6 minutes does not take in to account them opening your records, orientating themselves about you, calling your name, you walking to their room, the actual consultation including examination/prescription/coming up with some kind of plan/safety netting, you leaving and them then documenting everything that had gone on in the consultation, ordering any further tests, referring you, whatever.

Neither you nor the receptionist know whether you suffer a significant arrhythmia or not - if you need an emergency appointment, ask for one. If you are having chest pains, a Primary Care practice cannot sort this out.

Not like that at my surgery - Magic Words, they are The waiting weeks to see a GP on the offchance what you have will clear up on its own is the same though.

But it might not be. A patient had chest pain, was advised A&E. Said "it's not that type of chest pain" and decided to wait to see the GP the next day. In the consultation a cardiac referral was made for him.

Another patient thought he had indigestion, the GP thought otherwise, an ambulance was called and he was having a heart attack whilst wired up to the machines in the ambulance.

You can't always treat these things light heartedly.

Oh, and another point: as you are so unhappy about your surgery and how underresourced they are, I am sure you will consider writing to you local councillor or MP to ask for better funding for Primary Care.

90% of patient contacts are carried out in Primary Care for 9% of the NHS budget (or thereabouts - I struggle retaining statistics ).
Where I work we are the exact same number of full-time GP equivalents as 20 years ago (when I joined) for the same number of now older, more complex patients with lots of care having been transferred out of hospitals to GPs, while the local hospital has gone from 6 medical consultants to 23 in the same timeframe.

That crisis in the NHS you hear about in the news, it is actually happening and it is harming patients and staff.

I wish more people were angry about it and complained to those who can actually do something about it.

Gosh that is a long time to wait to see a doc. Routine appointments do tend to get booked up at our surgery but if you need to see someone urgently and you ring up at 8.30am they usually will give us a same day appointment. Our GP works late and will see patients after surgery if you can get past the inquisition from his receptionist

I'd ring back and get an emergency appointment.