Telling the GP

[greenstars87]

I just found out yesterday that I'm pregnant. With my first, I made a GP appointment and told them that way, but because of covid my local GP asks that you give the receptionists a brief reason for ringing. I don't want the receptionists knowing my business (small town ) has anyone else had this issue?

Do you need to tell them? Can you access the midwives direct?

Congratulations!
I don’t think you need to tell your GP... can’t you self-refer to your local midwives online?

In my area you don’t need to tell the GP, just self refer to your midwife team. You should be able to find the number by googling.

Are you telling the GP because of ongoing condition/treatment, if so just tell the receptionist you need a treatment/medication review. If no ongoing issues just self refer to your community midwife team.

In our area we have to tell the receptionist as she directly books us with the midwife. We never see the GP here.

Where I live (SE London) you don’t call the doctors, you self refer on the hospital website that you want to have baby in and then they contact you

Thanks everyone, I didn't know you could self refer!

I had to tell the receptionist and she sent me a referral link that I had to fill out.
The GPs don't really have anything to do with it usually

@greenstars87 echo what everyone said above about self-referring online. Your GP will just tell you to do that anyway. If you visit your local (or chosen) hospital website and browse to their maternity services, there should be a button or instructions from there.

As for the receptionist issue, I feel the same as you. I would just tell them "I'm not comfortable discussing this with anyone but my GP" they can't force you to tell them such personal information. Although bear in mind, they have access to your records anyway and can probably look up whatever they want. I draw the line at the receptionist giving me advice, which they seem to do a lot at my surgery. I've had to tell them "thank you, but your not medically trained and I would like to discuss this in more detail directly with a member of the GP or nursing staff" and generally get a callback

Yes definitely self refer, I remember with my first born last year, I called the gp when I found out I was pregnant and they didn't care at all. told me to wait untill 8 weeks and self refer, so that's what I did with this pregnancy, much easier. Congratulations!!

The receptionists are under strict rules regarding confidentiality, if they mentioned to anyone that you were pregnant due to you calling up then they would lose their job. Also the likely hood is that if your GP needed to refer you, they’d probably get the admin staff to complete the paper work anyway. I wouldn’t worry about it, you have the right to confidentiality and privacy and the surgery should be enforcing that if you can self refer

You just ring up and request a booking appointment with the midwife at my gps, so you have to tell the receptionist for them to book it. I get not wanting to share information with the receptionist but to be honest you can’t really book anything with the gp or nurse at our surgery without saying what it’s for. The receptionists have strict guidelines they must follow on patient confidentiality anyway.

You don’t need to waste a gps appointment, I mean unless you have a serious medical condition that could have an impact on pregnancy or need to change medication ASAP.

If the receptionist told anyone that you were pregnant, she would lose her job. Patient confidentiality is paramount.

I think now you just ring the midwives