Tried to get a doctors appointment for my severely constipated 16 month old, let me tell you how fucked the system is

[Lsquiggles]

Yes I understand covid has changed how and when you can see your doctor, but this is disgusting and a complete neglect of care.

My DD has been constipated for a few days but it all came to a head yesterday lunch time when she was screaming and I was scared she was going to give herself an injury. My dp went to the pharmacy which is opposite our gp surgery, queued up for 30 minutes (behind lots of people with physical prescriptions, interesting) to be told they couldn't give us anything over the counter as she's so young so to call gp. Annoying but fair enough.

Call the gp at 2pm and they say there's no appointments (of course), the doctor isn't in today (?!) and she'll send him an email so he can prescribe something.

The receptionist calls me back at 5pm (3 hours later) to say my DD needs to be seen in person but they're closed now so either she'll be seen Monday or to call the local walk in centre and 'they'll see her today'. At this point I'm already angry because they left me 3 hours with an upset child instead of telling me to call the walk in centre at 2pm.

I call the walk in centre, explain everything, she said they're doing a call back service and a doctor will call me in 2-3 hours. I explain my doctor has already said she needs to be seen in person, she shouts over me that it's the discretion of each doctor to decide that.

The walk in centre closes at 8pm, the doctor calls me at 8pm. The nicest doctor tells me how sorry he is that my doctors surgery passed the buck over to them and that they should've never turned away a child. He said your children are the most precious things to you and he's shocked with our doctors actions. He said he'd prescribe it over the phone or stay half an hour longer for us so we could bring her in to be seen. At this point my DD was in bed so I just accepted the prescription but he did say if we were worried over the weekend to call back and he'd see her ASAP.

How is this allowed to happen? My DD has no medical issues or allergies, all the symptoms I described were of basic constipation, why did I have to jump through all these hoops and be patronised by multiple receptionists just to get something to help my child go to the toilet?

This is why people are going to A&E with minor complaints, something needs to change before serious issues are left untreated or misdiagnosed

[quote Lsquiggles]@sirzy obviously there are different circumstances where it wouldn't apply[/quote]
Triage system is based on clinical need and not age - age as you say may be one component based on the presenting condition but it's not a hierarchy of age and on a Friday afternoon there are likely to be many more pressing cases than a child with constipation unless there were additional symptoms indicating a more serious condition

(And rightly so - once your DC is a teenager for example, if they had a far more concerning problem than constipation would you really be happy for them to go to the bottom of the queue so that constipated toddlers could be seen first?)

I'm surprised the pharmacy wouldn't give you lactulose when you asked? I got some for my daughter when She was 7 months old. I'm in Scotland though so maybe rules are different.

I've been really impressed with our local surgery since all the covid stuff happened, but I think it must be in the minority.

@Fleetwoodmacs I mentioned up thread that our's has been reasonably well run too (I've been really impressed with e-consult where dr replies by text next day - one thing needed actually looking at and I was booked in for the next day) but actually our local Facebook group is completely filled with complaints about it and about appointments etc so sometimes I wonder if it's a bit luck of the draw depending on the day!

I'd think we were in minority too but I've just this minute seen another complaint post pop up about them so maybe our surgery is often poor too, just don't know!

@Bythehairywartsonmywitchychin

The receptionists weren’t patronising, they pass the details on to the doctors for them to make the decision if the patient can be triaged over the phone or if they need to be seen in person.

Raise a complaint with your local CCG. The more complaints they receive the more they’ll have to do something about it.

How do you know? Patronising is often all about tone - the same information can be relayed, in a caring and empathic way (as should be the case when someone has a screaming and upset child) or they can say the same thing in a rude and/or impatient and/or patronising way.

...why did you need the GP for constipation anyway? Prune juice, plenty of water, pear, warm bath, bicycle legs, tummy massage, calpol. Half a sachet of movicol if that didn't work.

Calling your GP at 2pm on a Friday and being seen before the end of the day is excellent service. If it needed to be faster than that, if your child was in that much pain, then you should have gone to A&E.

@ohalrightthen obviously I had tried the things you've suggested and nothing had helped. You're saying it's not worth the doctors time but I should go to A&E? Makes no sense

If you had read the whole thread you'll hear many stories of people feeling let down by their local surgeries so this isn't me being precious about my child

Trying o get anywhere near a GP just now is near impossible. 'The NHS is open' we're told. Not where I am it's not!

Most definitely is where I am!!

I guess it varies from surgery to surgery. Mine are amazing, ds cut his face outside the surgery randomly so I rushed in and a doctor came and saw him and advised me on taking him to a and e for stitches.

The phone system also work a well at my place

So glad some of you are having good experiences!

@Lsquiggles but other people posting about having genuinely terrible trouble getting a GP appointment does not mean that you aren't being precious in your situation, where you had to wait a few hours for a prescription but were able to obtain one same day, for an arguably non urgent condition. You said it was "interesting" that others at the pharmacy had physical prescriptions so presumably they also managed to obtain appointments and for them in this case the system wasn't "fucked" either.

The GP at the walk in sounds brilliant, even agreeing to see you personally after hours or at the weekend. The GP surgery did call you back with an option but it sounds like physically could not fit your child in at that stage on a Friday afternoon with a dr down.

Making complaints about times like this when you've accessed help within a reasonable time detracts from the experiences of those who really have had a difficult time with GP appointments when the feedback is very important.

I just can't understand why you'd think this was terrible service when you got the prescription within a matter of hours. I realise very well that it's hard when you have a child in pain, but until this afternoon you weren't at the point of even considering medication

111 can be great in these circumstances, they have doctors who can prescribe over the phone within a couple of hours

@Lsquiggles you're complaining that you had to wait 3 or 4 hours to be seen by a doctor, which as i said for a Friday afternoon is really good. If that was too long for your daughter to wait, then yes she should have been in A&E, not the GP.

The GP is not for urgent care.

@ohallrightthen not now no, but it wasn't so long ago that GP's were on call.

This is poor.

GP surgeries (and many hospital consultants) have behaved disgracefully in covid. Mine, and my mums are still essentially closed and not see people physically. For 8 months? I think their behaviour of hiding behind covid is disgraceful.

Consultant for pancreatic cancer not doing any appointments, no zoom, nothing, telling patients they won't be seen till next February - so that's a year, since covid started. How is that ok?

They have just closed out local GP surgery and directed an entire village to to the walk in clinic at the near by hospital. An absolute disgrace. If you do t have a car or are not able to get the bus due to no money/disability/illness - your fucked.

It really is unacceptable.

During lockdown we went to video calls. Which was crap as the connection was awful and the one time I needed it DD wouldn’t show her face ( she had impetigo). They never resumed full service even after lockdown was lifted and several GP still worked through video calls. Now they have completely closed.

Our village has recently turned a disused building in to a Covid testing site. Infection rates has rocketed.

Chestnutsandsprouts OP isn’t being precious. My dd2 had awful constipation at this age and it’s terrible. ( to the point I had to rub soap on her anus to try and help the stool to come out it was compacted) The child would have been in terrible pain.

It’s utterly unacceptable to leave a child in pain no matter who trivial you think it is.

Also no one wants to go walk in centres. Hospitals are playing a big part in actually catching the virus.

@LauraBassi I'm not saying it's trivial, or that the OP is necessarily being precious about seeking treatment for constipation but I was disputing her point that other people having a difficult time accessing appointments automatically meant that she was not being precious in her situation.

I also think that expecting an appointment instantly at any time of the week is an unreasonably high expectation but to get a prescription the same day is a reasonable response

[quote Chestnutsandsprouts]@LauraBassi I'm not saying it's trivial, or that the OP is necessarily being precious about seeking treatment for constipation but I was disputing her point that other people having a difficult time accessing appointments automatically meant that she was not being precious in her situation.

I also think that expecting an appointment instantly at any time of the week is an unreasonably high expectation but to get a prescription the same day is a reasonable response[/quote]
If my child is in pain I expect for her to be ‘dealt with’ the same day. OP wasn’t looking for an appointment. Her first point of call was a pharmacy- it was them who her directed her to GP. The GP wasn’t available even on email/video call and the practice were happy for this child to wait till Monday or shunt her off to a walk in clinic.

The only reason she managed to obtain a prescription was because she was shunted at closing time of the GP surgery to the walk in clinic. Luckily - the GP their recognised the failure and did his best to rectify it and apologised.

This is unacceptable. OP may not have had access to transport to get to the clinic.

You're right, "appointment" was the wrong word.

You could also describe it as the practice assessing the capacity they had in the three hours before they shut for the weekend and possibly finding that they had patients in even more need and so directing (not shunting) the OP to an alternative clinic, where she was given the necessary prescription or the option to see a GP either then or the next day. That sounds like a reasonable outcome to me. I note that the GP there also called a few hours after referral because he was presumably working through other urgent cases.

By all means we should discuss problems in the system, by which I mean waiting months for colonoscopies, missed cancer referrals, long waiting lists for adults and children in pain and in need of operations (my own toddler is awaiting major surgery and treatment at Great Ormond Street, although I think they are doing really well managing their case load) and those who literally can't access GP appointments.

Mother waits a few hours and then is offered an appointment or prescription the same day for a child with constipation does not describe a "fucked system" in my view at all.

I had mastitis with DD and was very ill and in a lot of pain (I know I'm not a child so perhaps it doesn't count, but she was a newborn and dependent on me) and our GP surgery was closed that day for training and all urgent cases were dealt with at local walk in so I got the antibiotics several hours later in the evening - I remember being really pleased that there was still an option to access them that day, I wasn't cross about waiting a few hours.

The GP is not for urgent care.

Why do they do urgent appointments then? Pre-COVID I saw the gp for urgent care a few times.

I have to say I've had a really positive experiences with our local surgery since March, the new system they have in place seems to have made it much more efficient if anything.

I called last Monday because I thought I had a water infection, a nurse called me back within an hour, I dropped a sample round and by 1.00 I'd been told it wasn't an infection. A call was arranged with the senior nurse for Weds morning, at which we discussed what else could be wrong and on the Friday I was in having blood tests so they can rule various other things out. I really can't fault them tbh.

I don't think calling on a Friday afternoon is ever going to be that speedy tbh, but at least you did get a prescription the same day.

"The GP is not for urgent care."

I disagree. Unless it's A&E worthy, or 111, the GP is exactly who most cases should be seeing.

Many people contacting the GP can wait till the next day, a few days. Many can't, and should be dealt with that day.

And normally the system, GP surgeries CAN cope. And even in Covid, GP surgeries can cope with demand. IF managed properly!