Why are GPs so protected?

[BiggerBoat1]

Can anyone explain to me why GPs still aren't seeing patients face to face.? All other services seem to be back up and running and in my doctor's surgery the Practice Nurse and Midwife are seeing people as normal.

Dentists are back up and running as are opticians etc. I am a teacher so I have been expected to be in a classroom with 30 children at a time for months.

I asked the receptionist today at my GP surgery when they would be back to normal and she looked at me like I'd grown two heads and said "Not any time soon. We still have the Covid". Is it just me or are GPs being protected to a ridiculous extent?

Still, don't worry OP, we can't recruit now. Government decisions during the pandemic, and Lord Bethell's 'lucky to have a job', mass media and most MN posters around NHS pay has encouraged more of my GPs, ANPs, and PNs to push forward emigration, retirement and career changes away from the sector.

I expect government ambitions for corporatisation (not privatisation as I know most GPs are private, rather helping large corporates that are able to have external shareholders, NEDS and lobby to deliver primary care.
Perhaps have a look who are spending many millions lobbying and donating to Ministers and parties now. I expect offshoring elements of primary care, remote consults and such like too. PID Data to big tech. The future is bright.

I don't care who I see, as long as they have the skills to deal with my issue. I have a slight tendency to prefer face to face, but my husband actively prefers online and email consultations with this GP (local NHS). I think it should depend on the issue.

@Zilla1 I agree completely with your posts. I'm not even a doctor. Anyone should be able to see it, and I'm simply can't understand this endless GP bashing. I'm beginning to think it must be political, because nobody I know talks about this negativity. People have huge empathy for the NHS, especially now. Other than on mn.

Dentists are back up and running as are opticians etc.

Not mine

Many patients don't have the privilege of being able to 'just complain' or 'transfer to a different practice'.

Dentists around here that I've seen and speak to are seeing far fewer patients due to changes in infection control procedures. TBF and it might have changed but I think the adverse financial impacts on English NHS-funded dentists from lockdown have been much harder than on GPs.

I don't mind telephone appointments but at the moment we are told that they can only specify the day, not the time which makes working and continuing with daily life pretty difficult. Last month I had to discuss menopausal symptoms when I was in the supermarket.

Protected!

Such a short time ago everyone was banging pans for the NHS and now they are more inclined to bash its staff.

My sister is a GP and now on the brink of closing her practice. The patients phoning angrily for instant consultations (they are often rude and aggressive to reception staff) have no idea that they might soon have to travel to a new town to see any doctor at all.

All 3 doctors at her place are exhausted. One has now resigned as he can no longer cope. They have no-one to take his place.

The pandemic has meant that they have had to take turns to 'volunteer' to see patients for the local hospital. They have had to cover each other in order to make this possible.

Their staff (especially reception) keep having to self-isolate or to resign because they find it hard to deal with many of the patients who ring and other jobs are better. A new regular part of my sister's day is finding extra nurses/receptionists.

Covid is not over for medics + the backlog of patients who have not been able to see doctors during covid times is long and serious.

@1WayOrAnother2, sorry to hear about your DSis but I expect the next practice along will close soon. We can't recruit and more of our GPs and ANPs and PNs have given notice or dusted off exit plans. I know some practices don't have appointments available but every post I comment on about this issue effectively says ' GPs still aren't seeing patients face to face' presumably by extrapolating their own experience.

Some patients love remote consultations and some hate them. We've never stopped offering face to face. As with most of the posts regarding NHS pay, I think most posts genuinely reflect what the public think, irrespective of the substance. Perhaps we have or will get the health service and government we deserve.

It definitely seems to vary depending on your surgery. At mine you can't even get through the doors.

Last week I had to have a phone appointment and needed a urine dip test. I got told to go and collect the test from the surgery.

Get there and ring the bell, they bring the pot to the door, tell me to fill the pot and put in the 'post box' outside. So I drive home pee in the pot, drive back, put it in the post box. Go home get a text the next day saying I need to call back to discuss. Sit on hold for an hour, get given a time for a call back from the doctor. Turned out I needed antibiotics but they need to check my BP first. So I drive back, get let in to use the self serve BP machine, put the slip on the post box, and drive home again. Next day I get another text saying to call, sit on hold, get given another time slot for a call back, my BP is low they need to ask some questions before doing the prescription. I answer the questions and get told I need to go and collect the prescription. Drive back again, ring the bell, get the prescription and finally the antibiotics I need!

So 3 day, 3 phone calls and 4 round trips to the surgery for something that previously would have taken a single 10minute face to face appointment in which they should have done the dip test, BP and written the prescription in one clean swoop.

@worrybutterfly

It definitely seems to vary depending on your surgery. At mine you can't even get through the doors.

Last week I had to have a phone appointment and needed a urine dip test. I got told to go and collect the test from the surgery.

Get there and ring the bell, they bring the pot to the door, tell me to fill the pot and put in the 'post box' outside. So I drive home pee in the pot, drive back, put it in the post box. Go home get a text the next day saying I need to call back to discuss. Sit on hold for an hour, get given a time for a call back from the doctor. Turned out I needed antibiotics but they need to check my BP first. So I drive back, get let in to use the self serve BP machine, put the slip on the post box, and drive home again. Next day I get another text saying to call, sit on hold, get given another time slot for a call back, my BP is low they need to ask some questions before doing the prescription. I answer the questions and get told I need to go and collect the prescription. Drive back again, ring the bell, get the prescription and finally the antibiotics I need!

So 3 day, 3 phone calls and 4 round trips to the surgery for something that previously would have taken a single 10minute face to face appointment in which they should have done the dip test, BP and written the prescription in one clean swoop.

I had a UTI last week and instead of all that faff, I bought some antibiotics from Superdrug online, expensive but they were here next day. I just couldn’t face all the palaver of trying to get in contact with my surgery, giving a sample and then waiting for the results etc. The infection was gone by the time I would have got a prescription from the GP.

[quote Tinpotspectator]@Zilla1 I agree completely with your posts. I'm not even a doctor. Anyone should be able to see it, and I'm simply can't understand this endless GP bashing. I'm beginning to think it must be political, because nobody I know talks about this negativity. People have huge empathy for the NHS, especially now. Other than on mn. [/quote]
Absolutely agree. Every surgery in our area is triaging by phone then seeing those who need f2f
I wonder who or what is behind it

@alwaysinpainofsomesort

Unfortunately this is a reoccurring UTI and because I'm heavily pregnant it needed to be checked out. Hence also having to have a BP check.

I had gone to a pharmacy and they wouldn't touch me. I did also call maternity triage but got told I needed to see my GP.

@1WayOrAnother2

Protected!

Such a short time ago everyone was banging pans for the NHS and now they are more inclined to bash its staff.

My sister is a GP and now on the brink of closing her practice. The patients phoning angrily for instant consultations (they are often rude and aggressive to reception staff) have no idea that they might soon have to travel to a new town to see any doctor at all.

All 3 doctors at her place are exhausted. One has now resigned as he can no longer cope. They have no-one to take his place.

The pandemic has meant that they have had to take turns to 'volunteer' to see patients for the local hospital. They have had to cover each other in order to make this possible.

Their staff (especially reception) keep having to self-isolate or to resign because they find it hard to deal with many of the patients who ring and other jobs are better. A new regular part of my sister's day is finding extra nurses/receptionists.

Covid is not over for medics + the backlog of patients who have not been able to see doctors during covid times is long and serious.

General Practice is dealing with 33% more demand than pre-Covid, and in some areas it's even higher than that.

The UK has one of the lowest numbers of GPs per head of population in Europe, and probably the highest GP workload as, in many other countries, GPs don't do as broad a range of work as here.

GPs per head of population have been falling for over a decade. The Government tries to hide this by quoting headcount but almost all younger GPs work "part-time" (which, in general practice, usually means a 40 hour week). Only this week, the Government said that, for every GP partner who retires, 3 GPs are needed to replace him/her. So partners like me are officially doing the work of 3 people.. And still we get nothing but abuse and bile from people like the OP.

Practices are handing their contracts back and it's going to get much worse. I couldn't advise any young doctor to become a GP. It's a recipe to get treated like shit and burn out, while the media and social media screech that you are lazy fat cats. Female GPs have three times the suicide rate of the general population. I know why.

Female GPs have three times the suicide rate of the general population.

I had no idea.

It may feel like “abuse and bile” to you yet may people as you can see on this thread (and others) have had a pretty poor time of accessing any healthcare.

Partly it feels like bad planning - the concept of randomly ringing people back during the day no matter where they are. Assuming elderly, deaf etc people can access online services.

Yet: a GP still earns way more than the average person, had their studies funded by the public and it’s a pretty closed shop as most medics come from high socioeconomic backgrounds.

So the complaints about working hard ... perhaps so. But other people also work hard for much less pay and potentially even more Covid exposure.

@pitterpatterrain

It may feel like “abuse and bile” to you yet may people as you can see on this thread (and others) have had a pretty poor time of accessing any healthcare.

Partly it feels like bad planning - the concept of randomly ringing people back during the day no matter where they are. Assuming elderly, deaf etc people can access online services.

Yet: a GP still earns way more than the average person, had their studies funded by the public and it’s a pretty closed shop as most medics come from high socioeconomic backgrounds.

So the complaints about working hard ... perhaps so. But other people also work hard for much less pay and potentially even more Covid exposure.

I worked from 8 am to 11 pm yesterday. Logged on to MN at 9 pm for 10 minutes while I ate my supper - thread about how shit GPs are.

Started work at 6.30 this morning. Looked at MN while waiting for my work PC to boot up. Thread about how shit GPs are.

Honestly, why bother being a permanent GP with 2000 patients (currently 6000 because 2 colleagues are off with Covid) when I could become a locum and earn the same money with no responsibilities other than to the 30-odd patients I see on a given day?

There's lots of threads on here from people who can't access a GP (there always has been though). There's lots of people on here defending GPs with reference to how hard they are working. So there's clearly an issue, and it's not hard to see why... There aren't many doors into the NHS.

If it's like opticians we are still expected to triage so we can prioritise emergency then essential appointments , even though we are obviously seeing face to face ( we do sometimes still ring patients to redirect to say a red eye or new floaters/flashes NHS service or give advice over the phone when we can).
There is still a massive backlog of vulnerable people who didn't venture out in 2020 because of the different lockdowns with medical issues that being dealt with earlier would be less serious, plus some hospital departments are way behind on appointments and people ring to expect us/GPs to bring them to the front of the queue or sort it ourselves which is very time consuming.

In eyes the NHS hospital obviously has a backlog of routine cataract surgery so people are waiting longer and they are struggling with their vision. We've just had a private company sending someone in to tout for a new company that is offering NHS cataract surgery within a month. Now whilst this is great that patients get to have their surgery the knock on effect is the new private company owned hospital is cherry picking and will only see the straightforward'money making' cases and anyone else still needs to go to the main hospital . There is similar with Boots opening a private online GP,although each consultation will be paid for not covered by the NHS.
We need a large increase in our NHS capacity especially GPs (loads of whom have retired early in the last 5-10 years from a stressful job, but there isn't a pool of highly trained doctors in the background waiting and frankly the public doesn't see this). There is a massive shortage of GPs and it's a thankless task keeping up with peoples increasing expectations of being seen instantly for any minor complaint and an ageing population with multiple illnesses that take up the majority of appointments, plus being the gatekeeper to hospital care. Our local GP is a group of company owned ones and no where near as good as it used to be when run by the GPs themselves, but the model is to move towards these bigger group practices. I can see a massive change in the NHS working within in and feel quite sad.
No answer about face to face in individual practices except the NHS is trying to prioritise patient care with not enough GPs by keeping telephone triage as a way to weed out non necessary appointments. Although as you can see it's not really working well, the future doesn't show this is because of covid, but an increasing way of enabling us to see alternative GPs working online for bigger companies. There's a bigger picture here and it's not having a local GP and his

At my GP surgery, they’re still not seeing anyone. If you have to go to pick anything up or to see another professional, for example when I go to see my midwife, you have to knock on the locked front door, wait and then shout through the door why you’re there.

For example, my daughter had a two week long vomiting bug. The doctor would not see her but told us to pick up tubes for stool and urine samples and make an appointment to get her blood taken at the hospital. When we went to collect the tubes, we had to knock on the door, which opens on to a busy high street, shout her name and date of birth and state we had been told to collect sample tubes.

It’s got the potential to be completely humiliating. It’s also dangerous because it may put people off seeking medical attention.

My Dr has always seen people face to face, they do a triage by phone in the morning then the dr calls you back to talk to you then asks you to come to the practice where necessary. I think its a great system, we used to have open surgery where you just turned up for an "emergency" appointment between 9-11 so this is similar only you don't have to travel to be seen first

I haven't had an issue seeing a GP either.

The receptionist takes your reason for needing an appt, GP calls you, if it's something that needs to be seen in person then they book you in.

It's actually way more efficient than the old way. Yesterday I would have had to get DH to leave work, pick me up, take me to the surgery, take me home etc (I'm a new wheelchair user) just to have my pain meds reviewed. Instead I had a 5 minute phone call.

@80sMum

My GP has been offering mainly telephone consultations for the past 5 years or so. You're only offered an in-person appointment if the GP deems it necessary after having had the telephone consultation.

I think it is a cost-saving and time-saving exercise. Unfortunately, they were experiencing too many people booking appointments for trivial reasons and too many people booking appointments and then not bothering to turn up.
The telephone triage system weeds out the time wasters.

Mine's the same, I think it's a great system when it's been rolled out without the pressure of a pandemic. Always able to speak to someone same day although I'm fortunate that most of the time I'm only contacting them about things that can done over the phone. It saves me having to go in too. BUT I agree reading on here there's so many practices that haven't got it procedurally right yet even though phone triage seems a pretty sensible way forward to me. The other thing is I know some of the surgery staff are still doing Covid jab clinics so there's that pressure on.

Ps my dentist isn't back up and running, they're only dealing with emergencies

It depends on the surgery, ours has been seeing people throughout, and there was a local 'hot' clinic for those with covid symptoms if they needed to be seen by someone for something else (now they have an outdoor space in the surgery). The system worked really well and I hope they carry on- phone up and get a call back from the duty doctor, duty doctor has some in person appointments set aside (the day they're on they don't have routine apps) and they'll either do a video call or get you in to be seen the same day.

It's a surgery that covers a huge area and usually is bursting at the seams, so not sure how they've managed it, but yes it's crazy others still are making it very tricky.