How long to get a GP appointment in your part of Scotland?

[Stroopwaffels]

Just phoned the GP, need an appointment to discuss my HRT which is not working any more, I am not sleeping, anxious and just feel awful. No it's not a life and death emergency, but the first routine appointment I could get was 27 September. 15 days.

Large suburban Glasgow practice. (And before anyone asks - no, there is no e-consult, no online, no video calling. You phone in the morning and sit in the queue). This isn't sustainable, is it?

My current Practice is the call at 8am nightmare. You can book online for 3/4 weeks in advance.

The Practice has some excellent GPs but the online review rating is very low...because patients find it so difficult to actually get an appointment and see a GP.
Situation will likely be exacerbated with usual annual winter illnesses.

SNP pledged recently to open GP Walk In Centres, but noone knows where the staff will actually come from!

Phoned for an non urgent appointment. Was told there were none within the diary dates they had open which was 6 weeks. I had to fill out an e consultation online the next day at 7 am, got an email back with an appointment in 4 weeks time. They say this way works best. For whom, I am not sure. Central Scotland.

Lothians - Recently phoned at 8am on a Monday to make an appointment for 9 year old and had to describe symptoms in detail. Told I would get a call back that day “hopefully before 2pm”. Waited all morning then got a call from the receptionist saying GP wanted to speak to me face to face on Friday, but not necessary to bring DC. Went to the appointment where GP said he was unsure and wanted to check something and get back to me. Got a text the following Wednesday to say he thought it best to refer to hospital, but he didn’t know how long the queue was 🤷🏻‍♀️.

Likely to get worse in Edinburgh - 3 of the practices currently run by NHS Lothian are being put out to tender, with concerns that they'll be taken over by a commercial consortium- which tends to put profits ahead of care and employ cheaper staff.

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/fears-over-patient-services-as-3-edinburgh-gp-practices-set-to-be-put-out-to-tender-5372303

Moved to Edinburgh from Essex 6 months ago, I thought my oversubscribed and generally shitty GP in England was bad,until I registered with a GP here, and was transported back to the dark ages...
I'm type 3c diabetic, apparently that does not exist in Scotland. Need a prescription? ( I need insulin, glucose test stuff, needles etc) Good luck with that then, can take 3 weeks from putting in a script to actually being able to pick it up from the pharmacy... oh and today i get a phone call from the pharmacist at my GP, about a repeat prescription I put in 2 weeks ago and was told " I've never heard of that medication, so I'm not going to let you have it"
So here I sit, being denied medication that I actually NEED to live , worrying that I may have to go to A&E, and being told type 3c diabetes does not exist, and we have no idea what DKA is...

Sorry to hear of your experience.
What does your GP Practice website state about timescales for prescriptions? I thought 5 working days from ordering to it being ready at pharnacy was standard? The website should also give details about what to do if you run out of medication.
Super busy time of year of course.
Can you see a GP or Practice Nurse about your diabetes? You may be able to attend a specialist hospital diabetes clinic if you take insulin.
Good luck!

When I first registered with a GP here, I was told to book an urgent appointment with diabetes nurse at the practice. 8 weeks later was the earliest appointment they had, and that was apparently classed as Urgent. I have just last week attended a hospital diabetic specialist clinic, and was asked by the ' Consultant' why I bothered to test my glucose as "you're only type 2" !!! While the whole point of me going to said appointment was to have a specific blood test to prove to them I am not just type 2 diabetic because I have no pancreas!!!!

Rural Argyll&Bute, GP appointments available within a few days, often same day but anything a GP can't deal with will then almost certainly require travel to Glasgow/Paisley (three hours by train, or longer if it rains and they slow down the trains for some stretches).
dd who is a student in Edinburgh hasn't even managed to find a GP (or dentist) in the almost four years she's been there.

I started this thread 2 and a bit years ago, and things are unchanged at my practice. Still no online anything. You have to call for an appointment and to be fair if it's urgent urgent they will try to see you the same day but anything less urgent it's at least 2 weeks. Phone and you get "You are number.... 20... in the call queue".

Phone for a repeat prescription and it's often not actioned at all, I recently requested a very straightforward repeat prescription and it took three phone calls to sort out. Which is why you get the "number 20 in the call queue".

And I now see that the NHS are running a "do not attend A&E unless you are having a heart attack or a stroke" TV ad campaign.

Diabolical situation in Scotland.
The decline had already started well before Covid.
Patients now cannot access GPs/ primary care and may then need to go to A&E when their health condition deteriorates.
We need to hold to account the current Scottish Government and closely question prospective MSPs before the May election.
Our health service is not being valued and given the priority it needs.
A full review of all sectors is needed - not just throwing more money at it.

Same. But if it’s an emergency they can sometimes see you that day - or maybe just for kids as it was my daughter both times. You can also go to open hours on one day a week. Went once with my son and sat in the waiting room for 5 hours. We both got sick after as well.

I find it enormously stressful and try to ignore anything I can

Phoned at 9:30 this morning and got a in person appointment for an hour later for my elderly father (West Central Scotland).

yeah, NYE is obviously a good day to get a GP appt. I phoned for my husband yesterday morning, was 19th in the queue but when the callback came through I could pick morning or afternoon and got exactly the time that suited with a GP that he likes... who then spent a full ten minutes with him!

Our surgery is useless. No e-consult or anything. You phone at 8 and can’t get through/all appointments gone - if you get through they can set up an on the day or in 48h appointment. They release bookable apps at 2 on certain days, but even if you’re poised to hit the button at 1.59 they are gone by the time you get through - those are booking six weeks ahead. When I had to go in for an HRT review (because they wouldn’t give me any more without doing BP and weight, which is totally fair) it took weeks of ringing in to get an appointment and not able to get one, then a six week wait for it. I turned up to discover the receptionist had actually booked it as a telephone call! To be fair they magicked one up the next day for me.

We used to have private care through DP’s last job but his new post doesn’t have it as a benefit.

(Aberdeen)

Healthcare has to wait. The SNP have far more important priorities for your
money - spending more millions on lawyers and court cases to ensure male criminals can still be placed in ‘women’s’ jails for example. That’s obviously far more in the public interest.

Sadly, teaching schoolchildren that they can change sex can only increase NHS Scotland waiting times and worsen NHS finances. The cost of gender-affirming drugs and surgery for those who have medically transitioned is a real concern in the context of a collapsing NHS and this medical treatment being performed on originally healthy bodies. Those young people then face ongoing medical problems throughout their lives, which will have to be dealt with by the NHS. And I imagine that medical negligence claims will start to be made soon, with the cost of settling those claims also to be borne by the NHS (in other words by the Scottish taxpayer). It's an extraordinary own goal by the Scottish Government.

I can get a same day GP appointment without any trouble.

But referrals waiting lists are awful. DS is 2 years into waiting list for ADHD referral and DD has been waiting 6 months for a physiotherapist appt.

no end in sight for either

Nightmare, but if you arrived at the surgery for your phone appointment why did the GP not just come and get you and see you. It wouldn't take very long.
Just sounds like a crazy system.

The referral times for cancer are horrific. Lots of people are dying because of the state of the Scottish NHS.

They maybe weren’t there - working from home or something?

John Swinney is about to announce yet more tiny cash handouts because "child poverty is the priority"

Children being left without parents who have died of cancer etc not a priority

I am totally aligned with having to go to Switzerland when the time comes but I dread my loved ones getting sick