Can we have a thread on ridiculous things GP's have said?

[Butmummysnotanearlybird]

My contribution was "Oh well baby needs to know what sick tastes like" when they actually had CMPA and reflux. I'm sure there's worse out there 🙃

It took me 10 years to be listened to about a condition I suspected I had. Constantly dismissed and told I was exaggerating until finally a new gp listened to me, referred me for tests but I got the diagnosis too late to treat a lot of symptoms that I'd had to live with for all those years and are now irreversible. Not life threatening but it's massively impacted me in a lot of ways.

Also took over 2 years for gps to stop dismissing me as an over anxious first time mum and get my dd actually seen properly and given the treatment she needed. One said 'I see this all the time, you're over reacting so just relax'. I wasn't... we were in a&e a few hours later.

Same practise, different gp was utterly amazing for my friends baby, saw them at a few days old and immediately recognised a life threatening illness, baby was sent to hospital immediately and followed up with the parents for the year the baby was having treatment. if it wasn't for that gp they would have died within a week (now cured and a very happy, healthy child).

I now have a lovely gp, so kind and actually listens to me and reads and understand history and admits when he's not an expert (referred for baby not gaining weight and he said 'look, I'm not an expert of breastfeeding so I won't say stop doing it' which was refreshing after another medical professional telling me I was abusing the baby by breastfeeding).

I could write pages:
1)"I'm going to make a social services referral because you said that you had hit your child and you are clearly are depressed".

I never said anything of the sort, never mentioned the word hitting. And my Edinburgh questionnaire showed not a single sign of depression. Zero.

2. "You should've been allowed to have children, as a diabetic. They are at risk, you could have a hypo".

3. GP after Menopause Consultant wrote re changing oestrogen patch from 25 to 100. " Well I don't think that's necessary". I said "I'm sorry are you refusing the Consultants recommendation"?

Loving this thread.

Not going to read through all this but my GP is amazing. She is professional, kind and compassionate and I am so grateful for her support.

Apparently many of the posters on this thread are more people who think doctors are above reproach. And it's the minority that cause issues. Really?

I have chronic illness. I speak to lots of others with chronic illness. Literally all of them have stories about arrogance, misdiagnosis, poor treatment, medical gaslighting I could go on and on and on.

I attend a GP practice with another 15/20 doctors. I'll only see 2 of them. Because the others I have seen have been rude, dismissive, or incompetent.

I have to pay to see a private endocrinologist as my NHS one refused to treat me (by that I mean refused to give me medication I needed not refused to see me at all). Because he doesn't understand how to treat thyroid conditions. An endocrinologist!

And people saying raise it with the doctor! What's that going to achieve? Do you think someone saying "I think you are rude and arrogant and didn't like the way you spoke to me?" Is going to illicit any change? Or even worse "I think you gave me incorrect advice there, here's my evidence". Most doctors ime don't even like you to have looked up basic information on the NHS website let alone suggest to them they may have got it wrong and challenge their "years of medical training" (which for one specific condition could literally be a hour's lecture in reality!).

Imo there is a huge problem with the whole profession. Doctors have long been held up on pedestals and have been beyond reproach. It's not just the way many doctors treat patients it's how they treat other staff in hospitals too. That arrogance gets people killed (or worse imo leaves people chronically unwell and barely living for years and years) and it needs to stop.

I had guessed it was a thyroid issue before I read that far. So many of us not getting the full medication we need and nothing ever improves. It’s thoroughly depressing.

Wow, with already a GP shortage...they are hugely overworked. Does there really need to be a GP bashing post?!

I love the gp and other drs I have now but so many things in the past with drs.
●Talking about weight loss (history of Ed) I said I was eating 1000 calories a day gp said eat less.
●Not a G.p A&E told me i had anxiety and sent me away it was a p.e
●When my best friend died gp questioned me in whether she really was my bestfriend
●Got diagnosed with cancer from a consultant turns out I didn't have cancer.

●Not a gp again but was given an overdose in hospital

Not a good thread! I have had a few mad things happen with GP's and am currently in a battle with mine over my child's chronic illness but I won't come on here and bash them.
They're human and are under an incredible amount of pressure right now. It's probably the least respected field of being a doctor and they are nowhere near as respected as their hospital equivalents.

I just wish it were a level playing field where junior doctors actually wanted to go into primary care.

Wow.

Women in particular are failed repeatedly by their drs who ignore or dismiss them. Are clueless on women's issues despite women and girls being 50 percent of the population. Healthcare being default male is a huge problem. And anyone with a sick baby is treated like they don't know what they are doing and it's all in their head .

If men walked into a drs office passing out on the floor several days each month they would not be told its normal and take paracetamol.

There are posts here from Women who have been left with irreversible consequences if poor care and your concern is a gp might read this.

Maybe they should. Then they can tell all their dr mates/colleagues and they will know exactly which ones need telling too, to sort themselves out.

Not a gp but a consultant dismissed my condition as very unlikely and rare. It's well documented but a condition that they are not taught a huge amount about in medical school.

I was basically on bed rest for 6 months until he reluctantly agreed with another consultants opinion that I did in fact have a leak of spinal fluid and it wasn't just a migraine.

Same consultant is also a lot nicer and less dismissive when my dh comes into appointments with me.

I think gp’s reading this thread should acknowledge and be horrified that a sizeable minority of gp’s are putting patients lives at risk because they don’t listen and are usually arrogant too.
I have never forgotten the 20 month old baby who lived opposite me. The gp said he had a cold, he died from meningitis 3 days later. The same gp told me I suffered from anxiety when I had back pain, I had 2 slipped discs!
My dd stood at the reception desk in her surgery 3 weeks ago worried about her newborn’s breathing. The gp refused to listen to his chest and told her to go to A&E if she was worried. They also told her they couldn’t make an appointment for her at the desk she had to go home and do it online. Absolute madness!

My niece’s gp misdiagnosed her twice. My sil rang me very worried. I asked what her symptoms were. My niece was 17, very tired and had back pain and a sore throat.
I advised sil to ask for a blood test for glandular fever. I was right. How appalling though that a non gp can diagnose a person’s illness on the phone when the gp couldn’t f2f.
For balance my dsis’s gp is amazing. And the gp I had at my last address was fantastic and the whole surgery wonderful.

Some GPs are wonderful. I've been treated by them!

But some GPs are not, particularly when it comes to female health care where women are frequently dismissed and ignored.

This needs to be talked about more, and highlighted in threads like this or nothing will ever change. If you're a GP reading this and you are doing a good job, well done! But some of your colleagues are not, and if you can't handle criticism of that fact then maybe you are in the wrong job.

Before I was diagnosed with endometriosis (yep, that classic), I described the intense, crippling pain I experienced during ovulation that left me unable to walk.

My GP: "That's probably your bowel. No one can feel when they are ovulating".

The fact that it happened at the same time every bloody month in between periods where I had to wear incontinence pants to manage the blood flow was apparently not evidence that it was due to ovulation

Another GP told me that my son's extreme reflux, diarrhoea and eczema couldn't possibly be due to an allergy / intolerance. I'd bet it would surprise no one to learn that he was eventually found to have a lactose intolerance.

Like @TooManyPJs I'm at a big practice and I'll now only see two of the GPs. The rest of them are rude and won't provide the care that my specialist (also NHS) asks them for. Or rather wouldn't provide the care - he put a rocket up them a few weeks ago and I now have the appropriate meds when I need them rather than being told I can't have them and have to Do Better. One notable time when I said that my NHS specialist had written to tell them to prescribe I was told that letter was 3 months old and therefore no longer relevant. These are meds that keep me alive.

A couple of poor experiences will remain with me forever:

1. I had a dreadful UTI, the kind where you pass blood and the pain is excruciating and constant. I provided a sample at the GP and was told "there's a lot of blood in this" which I agreed and said it was why I was there. The GP then asked me if I was sure I wasn't on my period.

2. I was asked about periods in a consultation. I said I'd had a hysterectomy some years back. The GP then said "but they're still normal though?". That one was worth it for the incredulous look on the accompanying student's face

3. I was suicidal and made a GP appointment about it. I was told that I had nothing to be suicidal about. He made an analogy that if I were a stockbroker with a pregnant wife and an £800k mortgage I'd have a reason to feel like I wanted to end my life. But as I didn't there was nothing he could do and maybe I could google private psychiatrists instead.

I went to see my GP to talk about health anxiety. He was kind but did say "one day, you'll be right" and when I asked what he meant, replied "you'll think you're going to die from something and you will". Admittedly he had a point.

He once told me that health anxiety isn't limited to patients, and eventually left medicine in his 30s. Not sure whether that was a factor but it was sad that he didn't feel able to continue working as a GP. Hopefully it wasn't having me as a patient that tipped him over the edge...

Lymph nodes in armpit swollen: It is probably just a new deoderant you are using.

Persistent pains in stomach: It is probably just something you have eaten.

I: I have a pain here (points to left abdomen)
GP: That is your abdomen.
I: Yes, I know! I am trying to tell you I have a pain in it.
GP: It will probably go away.

Not to me but my sister

"oh that pain is nothing to worry about plenty of people get that at your time of life (she was 54 at the time in 2018), take some paracetamol and you'll be fine"...less than a week later she was in ICU on a ventilator with pnuemonia.

I've no personal stake in this - my GP is very good and switched on. But I do find it interestng how some PPs, who are clearly GPs or other medical professionals, have wanted the discussion shut down. First with claims of 'nastiness'. I'd like to know (genuine question) how it's 'nastiness' for people to report their experiences of dismissive, distressing or in some instances dangerous treatment by doctors. Is the implication that these people are lying? Or is it 'nasty' simply for them to talk about their experiences? I can't help feeling the PP who said there's a certain contingent that tries to deem it morally wrong to discuss bas experiences at the hands of medical professionals is spot on.

Then there's the emotional blackmail - suggesting that people speaking out about their experiences will lead to more GPs leaving. Again, I agree with PPs that someone who would genuinely leave the profession because of that is perhaps not emotionally robust enough for it.

I also found the suggestion that a positive thread would be 'more appropriate' quite troubling - with an undertone of exercise of power. 'Inappropriate' is an authoritative-sounding but imprecise catch-all for censured behaviour. I can't help feeling that statement reflects exactly the paternalistic type of putting patients in their place that many PPs here are reporting having experienced.

*bad experiences

@YouSoundLovely brilliant post.

My doctor is amazing. All the GP's at our surgery are pretty good.

But the neighbouring surgery not so much.

This is a long time back and the doctors were 'old school' GPs.

My friend slipped down the stairs. Hurt her back. Saw the doctor who said paracetamol and rest.

It steadily worsened and she was taken back and was given ibuprofen gel. Nothing touched the pain, he would not give anything stronger or refer her. Just advised to rest.

It took her losing bowel and bladder function before she was admitted. It was too late sadly. She was rushed to the next major hospital for spinal surgery but in her early 20's she lost the use of her foot, her bladder and when she's overdoes a very basic day, her bowel. She had a herniated disc that ruptured and the nerves were permanently damaged.

She's spent her life living with the consequences of a bad GP. It wasn't as though he got it wrong once, it was 3-4 times she had contacted him.

He just wouldn't listen. He knew best and we were to do as instructed. He's long retired now, he was retirement age back then, but what a tragic mess he left in his wake.

The doctors I know today are not at all like this. They do listen. Modern doctors are so much better informed.

@YouSoundLovely spot on!

Having abnormal cells on a smear test and sat in the Drs waiting for a HPV test. "Are you sure your husband has not been having an affair?" says the Dr!!

Most GPS are great in my experience but there are those who aren’t and no one should have to not talk about that for fear of upsetting the others.

Listening to the experience of patients / service users is a really important part of CPD and threads like this can be really helpful. There was one about midwives years ago and a couple of midwives came on and said they’d learned a lot of what it feels like to be on the patient end of the experience.

That said (and I haven’t read all the comments), but a lot of these seem to be people who are pissed off that the GP didn’t diagnose their condition as quickly as they wanted which is really different from ‘ridiculous things GPs say’ in my opinion.

My contribution isn’t a GP but an orthopaedic surgeon who told me that they would operate on my knees ‘next week’ and I’d be using crutches for a while. It took the nurse to make him listen to that fact that I’d got 2 broken arms in slings for him to look up beyond my knees and admit that crutches wouldn’t be possible.

Wow this response is so defensive / passive aggressive @Silverplatedchocolatehobnob

Did you recognise yourself or something?